Ben came in nursing a limp tail last night. It was still flying at half mast this morning so I called the vet.
When Ben doesn’t feel well, he takes to sleeping in strange places. I’ll come around the corner and find him sleeping against the wrong wall or under an uncustomary chair, maybe the wrong side of the bed. It’s funny that we’d even notice such a thing, but of course we do. By mid-afternoon he was getting positively cuddly with me. “Okay,” I told him. “Now I know something’s not right.”
104° fever as it turned out. I hauled Luke and Ben down to the vet and Ben got $128 hair cut a poodle would be proud of and a box of clavamax. Lucky boy.
When the vet walked in, she said, “Hurt tail?”
“Yes,” I said. “I don’t know what happened, but he occasionally brawls with the cat down the street...”
“I can see that,” she said paging through successive records of abscesses in his medical chart. She gave him a scratch behind the ears. “Well, let’s do a full exam before we shave him.” Out came the scale. I winced before she even set it on the counter.
“Ben weighs 17 and 1/2 pounds.”
“Ah.” I wondered whether I should point out that he has a very stocky build.
“I think it may be time to talk about a diet.”
“Ah.”
By now I was looking around for the “Bad Pet Owner” stamp for my forehead.
So now Ben has $128 hair cut a poodle would be proud of, a box of Clavamax, and a bag of diet cat food. Very lucky boy. He also has two sadistic owners who cackle at him every time he walks in the room and have taken to calling him “Bottle Brush.”
...But just because we love you, Ben.