I'm alive

It's been a while since the Top Cat spoke. Just to let you know I've recovered from my 'flu. Life goes on. I'm alive.

It's been a long time since I watched these lights alone
I look around my life tonight and you are gone
I might have done something to keep you if I'd known
How unhappy you had become

While I was dreaming of you
With my heart in your hands
And I was following though
With my beautiful plans

Yeah, now I'm rolling down this canyon drive
With your laughter in my head
I'm gonna have to block it out somehow to survive
'cause those dreams are dead
And I'm alive ...

That song is for my human. And thank you, Jackson Browne.

If I died, would she feel guilty?

What if I don't overcome this flu I have now and died?

I think my human will be wracked with guilt. It will be a long while before she would be able to let go of the 'what if' questions - What if she had not boarded me in a cat community where, understandably, germs are passed around more freely? What if she found some other solution [read "compromise"] to my tearing up the new furnishings in her home?

I hardly fell ill when I was with her. The couple of times I caught a chill, she picked up on it rightaway and took me to the vet. Other than that, there've been a couple of urinary tract infections, which the vet also fixed.

The weather has been kooky lately, which is maybe how I got sick. It's either hot as hell - which sends me and my roomies leaving our room through the hole in the wall to go for cooler air in the garden beyond - or pouring heavily, which sends the temperatures dipping, especially if it's a night-time rainstorm.

Or someone in the room passed me the germs, which is rather more likely what happened.

Anyway, I was thinking about the nature of guilt just now. If I died, and my human needed to get over her decision to 'dump me', it would entail her forgiving herself.

We are always told to forgive others because it's good for the soul. It's like an anti-depressant. Don't seek an eye for an eye, or stew about seeking an eye for an eye, because all that stored up aggro is bad for the constitution.

And that's just the physical side of it. Ever kept company with someone so full of venom against someone else he perceives to have done him an injustice? It isn't very a positive or life-affirming business, really.

But how often do humans think about forgiving themselves for what they have done? The option is to stay guilt-ridden. Forgiving oneself takes work, though. It takes adopting a different reality. It takes disentangling the self from the perception that another person or thing had 'control' over the action that was taken.

I believe my human would take full ownership of the decision she made. She had come up against keeping me vs giving me up. She chose to give me up.

It was far more than being a vote to keep her new furniture in good condition, though a big fringe benefit for her is that she freed herself from cleaning up after me. [List: Scattered litter, fur all over the place, occasional puddles of vomit, litter-box smell and poo/pee and my dark brown 'dhoby marks' on strategic walls/furniture.]

I understand that, for her, It was also a vote for harmony at home, since her hubby has never been that crazy about cats, or, more particularly, about me!

He thinks I am an evil, ungrateful and unfathomable ball of fur, though he has acknowledged I do have my 'softer' side. He has seen me come when called and once said that maybe I had a zipper on my belly, which, when undone, would produce a dog that had been wearing a moggie costume all this while.

Of course it hurts that she chose her marriage and home over me. But a choice had to be made. I absolve her from blame for it. So if I go, I go. It's enough that I had eight good years under her roof. [Really? Am I so magnanimous? Or am I just being a manipulative S.O.B. using reverse psychology?]

Guilt... regret... My human has always been one to take decisions based on information then available at each crossroads at that time, and never look back. Life is not about continually keeping a cost-benefits scorecard for every choice one makes. She is sure of her decision, my human is. Her mom asked her last week whether she would ever bring me home again, and I believe her answer was an unequivocal 'No'.

The poet Robert Browning's words capture her thinking:

'I am grown peaceful as old age tonight.
I regret a little, I would change still less.'

Anyway, Auntie S started me on this medicine called Vibravet today and fully expects me to make a turnaround. She told my human today that I'm still eating well, which is a positive sign.

*A-chooo!* I've got the flu

My human came to visit me today, but I was feeling really out of sorts. [Ohhhh, my headdd! See picture!]

What lousy timing she has. Auntie S isolated me from my roomies in her (air-conditioned) TV room so my human could meet me uninterrupted, but I sneezed a couple of times and felt a little dopey. The watery eyes I've had in the past two days have improved with the eye cream that Auntie S applied, but my nose [I'm sure I sound like I'm saying "By dose..."] is a little runny.

My human was happy to see me, and me, her, too. I rubbed my face against her leg as she sat on the floor, calling my name. But I just wanted to sit down.

She even brought me a balled-up plastic bag to play with, but my energy level was lower than usual. I swatted it a few times and that was that. To think that I can go at it for an hour straight when I'm my usual self!

Actually, my attention was focused on the door to the room. I was acutely aware that Godbless [one of Auntie S' two mongrels, with all her dog smell] was sitting just outside it and that was infinitely more interesting than the ball or even my human.

My human is quite worried about my flu. I think she has read that flu can be dangerous for us moggies. Read more about cat flu here.

I hope to get better soon, otherwise - *aaarrrgggghhh!* - Auntie S will have to bring me to the vet. [See previous post.] Then again, she has a lot of experience dealing with sick moggies, and might have some prescription medicine in her stash, so that might not be necessary...

On vets and taking medicines

One word on this topic: UGGHH!

Going to the vet is bad news. It all begins with the car ride there. I hate going out in the car. It entails being put into my pet carrier and not understanding why trees and buildings which don't normally move on their own start moving.

And then I end up in this strange place with all its disgusting smells and The Vet who would most certainly cause me pain or panic - often both.

Although I was an indoor cat while living with my human and therefore not likely to catch unusual illnesses, she brought me for my shots every year, around July, if I remember right. Her reason: I needed the resistence against the bugs lurking at the Pet Hotel, where she would board me once or twice a year when she and her husband took off on holiday. [Life at the Pet Hotel: That's for another post!]

When panic overcame me at the vet's, I never shrank back and went on the defensive. Sweet ol' me became aggressive instead. At the vet's clinic, I would hiss and spit and raise my hackles - yes, even at my human, when all logic told me it was just her, trying to calm me down. I'm a regular Jekyll and Hyde, I am.

The vet eventually gave up examining me. I dunno why Dr N didn't have one of those fang-proof gloves she could wear when lifting me out of my carrier. She just remarked to my human that "your cat looks kinda healthy" [while yours truly yowled and hissed away] without carrying or palpating me.

So I've not been "felt up" by a vet for a while now. Goodness knows what growths I could be nursing that would have been picked up in such a manual examination.

For the past few visits, I just sat tight in my carrier while the vet administered the jab to the back of my neck through the little trap door at the top of the carrier.

I don't even want to think of that one time she did carry me out, after telling my human that "it would be best" for her to leave the room for a bit. Just picture this: Her clinic, slightly larger than a bathroom in a HDB flat, with sliding doors on both sides closed off, and me vs. her in a face-off.

It was just me hissing and her going "nice cat, nice Nookie..." in that small space for an interminable length of time before she overpowered me - knocking over some steel kidney bowls in the process - and got me on that examining table, gave me my shot and stuffed me back in my carrier before I could rattle her even more. Harharharharh

Taking medicines: I'm like your average cat - a tough customer when it comes to taking medicines. I'm sure my human hates it as much as I do.

She can't decide which is worse - administering liquid medicine with a syringe and then having to wipe up the mess all over the floor, or forcing me to swallow a pill which slowly disintegrates from repeated handling and my saliva. Either way, she has to steel herself for some scratches down her forearms. Harhararharh

Credit to her, she's tried other tricks. She once pulverised the tablet, mixed it up with honey and smeared it all over my paws - which I was then compelled to lick to get them clean. The downside here was that she couldn't be sure I was taking in the full dosage.

Her other trick (which didn't work): Mixing pulverised tablet or liquid medicine in my favourite wet food. One sniff told me it was "off". What did she take me for - STOOOPID?

The few times she succeeded, it was plain awful. I'd start drooling big time, I'd gag and retch and let out a plaintive yowl to win some sympathy...

There was an old email joke circulating about the difference between feeding medicine to dogs and cats. For us cats, it's a complicated, multi-step process which begins with "Remove tablet from foil pack." Then it goes on to "Open cat's mouth by squeezing gently on jaw", to "Put pill on back of tongue, hold jaw shut and stroke throat to stimulate the swallow reflex".

The next step: "Retrieve pill from corner of kitchen floor. Hold down cat with old towel and re-insert pill at back of mouth..." and so on and so forth, the later steps even including "Summon husband to help with holding down the *&%# cat".

For dogs - those silly, fawning things - feeding them a pill is a one step process: "Wrap pill in bacon and make him beg for it." HAHRHARHARARHARHAHWOWWHWHARHAR!!