About a week and a half ago, at our little house we had initially rented in the hill, I was woken up in the middle of the night to the guttural sounds of a cat fight. Right away I scanned for Diego, who was not with me in his usual sleeping spot in bed! Yikes! I rushed to the window and called him, interrupting the cat fight. He came inside shortly afterwards, and as soon as he got in, i had the light on and was pinning him to the bed to try and see if he was the one who had gotten into the fight. He was! His little ear had some blood on it, and he was terrified. I cleaned him up as best as he would let me, put a little bit of antibiotic on his ear, and figured we'd wait and see.
Well two days of him hiding in the closet, and I decided on the third day that if he was not better, we were going to the vet. We came home from painting at the new place to find his ear covered in blood and he smelled of infection, from two wounds I had not previously seen.
Search for vets online.
Call. No answers. It is 3:40. Siesta is over at 4:00.
Wait 20 minutes. Ugh.
Call at 4:01 the vet that is closest to our new place. They pick up!
Do they accept cats as patients? Yes!
Can I come right now? Yes!
Grab cat carrier, favorite fleece blankie and Diego and into the van and off to the vet we go.
I now realize, on the 7 minute drive there, that I have no vet vocabulary. I have his vet records from Canada from before we left. That's it. I don't even know if the definition of cat fight is different for the cat version versus the version between women.
We arrive. How to describe the event which has brought us to Dr. Diez?
Me: Hace quatro noches... MEOW, KSSS, GRRR, WREEE!!!
(You must imagine me trying to intimate a cat fight, hands curled into claws, scratching, making these weird cat like noises...)
Ralph and Diego look on sadly. The vet says, "ah, si".
She then asks a series of related queries, in Spanish, which we are able to answer, miraculously. She says she is going to get some supplies and she'll be back. When she comes back she tries to clean the wound and Diego is NOT happy. She looks at him and I ask her if she would like to give him a sedative. I am presuming the word is roughly the same: sedativo.
She says yes, and then has a long look at him and then tells me she is wondering if it should be by injection or gas.
What a second! We're talking about the same thing, here, right? You are just doing to sedate my cat, not put him to sleep, right? How to ask this? I stumble around the words "para calmar" and "no para dormir pour la vida" and she assures me that no, she is not going to euthanize my little fur ball, just chill him out so she can shave him, clean the wounds and assess the damage. She wraps Diego up like a little burrito in his fleece blanket and as she is carrying him to her surgery, she tells us we can come back in 30 minutes.
We go for coffee in a failed attempt to pretend we are fine and not worried.
Thirty minutes later we are back with a partially shaved and very stoned Diego. Dr. Diez explains that there were actually several puncture wounds, and one on his ear actually went right through the delicate ear skin. He was quite infected and will be on strong antibiotics and pain meds, and she will see him again on Saturday, please.
Time for the bill. Ralph and I hold our breath as she calculates it. In Canada, we estimate we would be talking roughly $600 or more.
She shows us the figure. 410 pesos. The rough equivalent of $35 Canadian. Amazing.
Just imagine the story she told to her family that night at dinner!
Well two days of him hiding in the closet, and I decided on the third day that if he was not better, we were going to the vet. We came home from painting at the new place to find his ear covered in blood and he smelled of infection, from two wounds I had not previously seen.
Search for vets online.
Call. No answers. It is 3:40. Siesta is over at 4:00.
Wait 20 minutes. Ugh.
Call at 4:01 the vet that is closest to our new place. They pick up!
Do they accept cats as patients? Yes!
Can I come right now? Yes!
Grab cat carrier, favorite fleece blankie and Diego and into the van and off to the vet we go.
I now realize, on the 7 minute drive there, that I have no vet vocabulary. I have his vet records from Canada from before we left. That's it. I don't even know if the definition of cat fight is different for the cat version versus the version between women.
We arrive. How to describe the event which has brought us to Dr. Diez?
Me: Hace quatro noches... MEOW, KSSS, GRRR, WREEE!!!
(You must imagine me trying to intimate a cat fight, hands curled into claws, scratching, making these weird cat like noises...)
Ralph and Diego look on sadly. The vet says, "ah, si".
She then asks a series of related queries, in Spanish, which we are able to answer, miraculously. She says she is going to get some supplies and she'll be back. When she comes back she tries to clean the wound and Diego is NOT happy. She looks at him and I ask her if she would like to give him a sedative. I am presuming the word is roughly the same: sedativo.
She says yes, and then has a long look at him and then tells me she is wondering if it should be by injection or gas.
What a second! We're talking about the same thing, here, right? You are just doing to sedate my cat, not put him to sleep, right? How to ask this? I stumble around the words "para calmar" and "no para dormir pour la vida" and she assures me that no, she is not going to euthanize my little fur ball, just chill him out so she can shave him, clean the wounds and assess the damage. She wraps Diego up like a little burrito in his fleece blanket and as she is carrying him to her surgery, she tells us we can come back in 30 minutes.
We go for coffee in a failed attempt to pretend we are fine and not worried.
Thirty minutes later we are back with a partially shaved and very stoned Diego. Dr. Diez explains that there were actually several puncture wounds, and one on his ear actually went right through the delicate ear skin. He was quite infected and will be on strong antibiotics and pain meds, and she will see him again on Saturday, please.
Time for the bill. Ralph and I hold our breath as she calculates it. In Canada, we estimate we would be talking roughly $600 or more.
She shows us the figure. 410 pesos. The rough equivalent of $35 Canadian. Amazing.
Just imagine the story she told to her family that night at dinner!
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment