Malika, the newest cat to cross our threshold, was spayed Tuesday at our veterinary in south Arlington. After moving to Plano, our veterinary is an hour’s drive away. I went to pick her up yesterday. Her shaved belly revealed a handful of stitches, but she didn’t seem to mind them at all.
When I returned home from work Friday afternoon, I laid with her on the sofa. She stretched across my chest and gave me sweet kisses on my chin and neck. When the phone rang, I put her on the cushions while I talked to my friend.
Somewhere about ten minutes into the conversation I glanced at kitty who was sitting up and noticed a strange, ear-like fold in her belly. She had already pulled out two of her stitches and was well into the third.
I screamed something about a giant hole in my kitty to my friend, hung up, and immediately dialed the vet. One hour later, we were in south Arlington getting her belly stapled back together.
The women in the vet’s office coo and praise Malika for being so beautiful and sweet. Apparently only my two 14-year-old cats and I know the real Malika, who bites our faces and fingers when she’s sleepy. Since she’s a cat, that is pretty much a continuous state. In many ways, she’s like a child who tries its damndest to fight the urge to nap and instead unleashes its hellion nature on all those nearby.
I mistakenly thought that they had removed all of the mean parts when they took out her uterus and ovaries.
Payback, however, can be just as rough. To honor the third two-hour roundtrip in four days, I gladly strapped on an “Elizabethan collar” when I got home. Considering her first name was Princess Stinky Butt, I have to confess that she now appears considerably more royal.