Just Take Your Pill

June first, marks the beginning of hurricane season here in Florida. I say it marks the end of rat season, and this past season was the first that none of the little buggers found their way into some part of my house. Usually at least one finds its way into the attic, eats the rat poison I put up there and dies. I always know when one has died up there, because my kitchen fills up with hundreds of huge black flies that have hatched from the maggots on the dead rat carcass. Some of the credit has to go to my two little rat catchers, Carlotta and Fat Kitty. No rodent that values its life would ever set foot into their domain.

It is interesting how you get attached to the cats and dogs that you share your home with. Even to the point where you are spending more money on their health care than you spend on your own. I recently took Carlotta to the veterinarian to check up on her hyper-thyroid condition, and that little cat, who weighs less than a wet dish rag, ended up costing me over four hundred and fifty dollars. I think that comes to about a hundred dollars per pound. The doctor gave me a new medication that Carlotta has to take for a while, and he told me it was easy to administer. First, he explained, all I needed to do was fill the syringe, then hold the kitty with one hand, pry her mouth open with the other hand, and then squirt the liquid medication into her mouth. The only problem I can see is growing that third hand.

Molly is also on pills. Some hormone pills to rejuvenate her female parts, and up until the other day giving her the pill wasn't a problem. Suddenly, on Sunday, Molly decided she wasn't going to take her pills any more. Usually I just open her mouth, push the pill to the back of her throat, then hold her muzzle shut until I see her swallow. This time, when I went to open her mouth, she clamped her teeth shut like a bear trap, and no amount of coaxing could get her to open up. I think I even might have heard her growl a bit. My next ploy was to wrap the pill in a gob of meat, which she happily wolfed down, and then very lady like, spit the untouched pill back out on the floor. It wasn't until dinner time when Mark served swordfish, that I was able to slip Molly the pill. In a feeding frenzy of Molly and the two cats, eating the left over fish parts, I threw in the pill. I'm pretty sure Molly was the one who got it. I don't know what the consequences of a cat getting female dog hormones would be.