You Rock!

Rock Journal Sketch by Cj

As I approach the Imagine the Possibilities house, I see that the green lawn has been shorn, the blades of grass now showing brown edges at the top. Oh, no, I think. I hope the Imagine the Possibilities rock is still there! I hope it didn’t get eaten by a lawnmower! Imagine the possibilities of that happening!

            I slow my pace to scan the lawn for the rock. I don’t see it, at least not at first. But then, aha! I spot the lime green oval in a slightly different spot, not quite at the edge of the lawn, but a bit more in the grass itself. I stop to take in its message, when lo and behold, it’s a different message.  Huh?

            I gaze down at the new message, “You Rock”, in bright blue paint. It’s surrounded by a few cute symbols painted in red---a spiral underneath---I can’t remember what that means, but do remember K the Librarian at Woo Woo’s Berkeley campus was obsessed with this symbol. It meant something like never ending possibilities? Okay, so now the possibilities aren’t spelled out anymore? They are encased in this tiny red spiral? And then a star on one side—again, a star symbolizes what? The heavens? The sparkles? Star Trek? And finally, a few seemingly random red markings. They don’t appear to be specific symbols at all. Maybe the artist just ran out of ideas?

            But the main message was clear, whoever stopped to read this rock rocked!

            I do?

            I honestly can’t think of any reason why I rock except for one. Nursing little Clara kitten back to health after her spay surgery.

            Of course, this was supposed to be ‘routine’ but it’s been anything but. The women at Berkeley Humane society where the surgery was done were super sweet, but when I picked up Clara, the woman who gave her back to me said “Clara is NOT happy!” And when I had dropped her off, warning the woman of Clara’s propensity for feistiness, she said, “Well, she is an orange female tabby.” 

            The point is—Clara is not an easy cat, which seems to be my lot in cat ownership. Pablo. or as Owen Hill called him, “Moby Dick” was the great white monster. He bit all my partners, attacked my neighbor when she tried to take care of him, and the vet had labeled his chart with “Attacks without warning” in bright red felt pen.

            I thought he was my most challenging cat, that is until I got Clara. And so, this last week, when I’ve been trying to help her convalesce, she’s been most uncooperative. It’s not her fault. It is major abdominal surgery. Why when I remember my own hysterectomy, well, let’s just say my body did not cooperate either.

            Donna, at BHS, gave me the dreaded cone to keep Clara from licking her wound, adamant about keeping it on her for 10 -14 days so that she wouldn’t infect it. Yeah, right. When I got her home, Clara was having none of the dreaded cone head. So, I gave up pretty quickly. I also tried the ‘sock’ shirt that my niece, Thea, told me about. This too was more than a little challenging though I did get it on her for a night.

            But the biggest challenge came this week when Clara stopped eating. And then barfed up some food she had eaten the day before, and so, I knew something was terribly wrong. Rushing her to El Cerrito Animal Hospital where it was Wait in line Covid mayhem, the Vet finally came out to talk to me: “She’s in severe pain. I couldn’t treat her. She tried to bite my tech. Here’s some liquid meds for you to give her. If she’s not better in 48 hours, then bring her back and we’ll hospitalize her.”

            Damn! This all sounded really BAD! And no shots of antibiotics or pain meds? Nope, she wouldn’t allow it.

            “But ….” I almost started to cry. How the hell was I going to get these meds down her? “I don’t know if I can get administer these meds….”

            “Try putting them in her food.”

            “She’s NOT eating.”

            A shrug. A call back to the office. Pulling his mask back on, the vet turned to deal with the next crisis.

When I got her home, of course, the idea to put the meds in the food was a no go. She wouldn’t eat. So, yes, I got the pink syringe down her with only a minimum of fuchsia goo on the floor. And the pain meds, too, gabapentin? That’s what I take for pain. Well, at least I knew it worked. This, too, I managed to get down her.  I had to repeat this every 12 hours.

            She started to improve the next day.  But still not 100%. I continued with the syringe down the throat, and finally that night, she began to eat! I tried putting the meds in the stinky tuna that Mr. Ian had brought over. Voila! She ate the meds in the tuna!

            Finally, she continued to lick her wound. The vet had told me that this is why she got so sick. She had infected it. So….I bit the bullet and slammed the cone head on her. She tolerated it! Though, man, she was mad! And disoriented. I felt so bad. But realized that if she was going to get well, that she had to keep this on.

            And she has for the most part. She continues to improve and is almost back to her old self.

            So, maybe yes, I rock, but mostly, Clara Rocks!

            Now if I could only get her to stop attacking Mr. Ian! Then, I would really Rock!