Leap Year Day
Monday, 29 February 2016 09:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
carose59"Nice Solid Citizen, With One Tiny Problem: He Shoots At People."*
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Meg developed an abscess where he got bitten/scratched last week.
I thought his face was looking fuller, but he's difficult about letting me do anything with him, so I wasn't until yesterday I could positively tell something was wrong. And he was acting perfectly normal. Well, normal for him.
So, this morning I stayed home from work and called the vet's office when it opened. I got an appointment for ten fifteen and spent the next two hours crying. You know, about the usual things: Meg was going to die, I'm a terrible cat-owner, the vet was going to tell me I should have brought him in sooner, Meg deserves someone better than me, the vet was going to tell me I'm a terrible cat-owner for letting Meg go outside, Meg was going to die, I was going to die.
Nobody died. They took Meg's temperature (he had a fever), drained his abscess, and gave him a shot of antibiotics. Nobody said anything about how he should be an indoor cat. In fact, the vet said it's very difficult to change an outdoor cat to an indoor cat against his will. She also said he was a lovely cat, very well-behaved and sturdy.
I was instructed to keep Meg in the house for a few days.
I brought him home, left him in the house, and went to work for the afternoon. When I got home, I let him out.
I had groceries to bring in, and decided he could have a few minutes to run around and do his business. (He hates using his box. It's only for emergencies; the proper place to do one's business is outside.) He walked around and sniffed things while I unloaded groceries and came right in when I told him to. He's been sitting in the window in the kitchen ever since. He really is a remarkably good cat.
I've been watching The Pirates of Penzance because today is Leap Year Day, which makes it Frederic's birthday. If my figures are correct, he'd be forty years old. Well, forty birthdays old. I could watch On Catlike Tread over and over again.
In case you don't know, the story is this: Frederic was indentured to the Pirate King when he was a little boy because his nurse misunderstood her instructions. What she'd been told to do was indenture him to a pilot. But now Frederic is twenty-one and he's leaving the pirates. He loves them, but abhors what they do—although they're really lousy pirates. They never attack smaller vessels, or orphans. So everyone they meet claims to be an orphan. Anyway, Frederic vows to exterminate them.
Once ashore, he meets Mabel and her seven sisters. He and Mabel fall in love. Then the other pirates show up and try to abduct the sisters, to marry them against there will. (Because that's what pirates do.) Their father, the Major-General arrives, finds out who they are, and claims to be an orphan, so they leave the girls.
Plans are made to get rid of the pirates with Frederic leading a bunch of bobbies. But the Pirate King and Ruth (Frederic's former nurse) arrive to break some news: Frederic's contract says he's to stay with the pirates not until he turns twenty-one, but until his twenty-first birthday. And since he was born on Leap Year Day, that won't come until 1940. He is honor-bound to return to the pirates.
He's also honor-bound to tell them that the Major-General isn't really an orphan, which enrages the Pirate King, who swears vengeance. Frederic tells Mabel he has to go and she rallies the bobbies.
The pirates all come back and fight the bobbies. The Pirate King is just about to execute the Major-General when the constable calls upon him to surrender in the name of the Queen. And, because they love their queen, the pirates surrender. Then Ruth tells everyone that the pirates are really noblemen, to which the Major-General responds that they can then marry his daughter. And they all live happily ever after.
*Joe Mannix
-:- -:- -:- -:-
Meg developed an abscess where he got bitten/scratched last week.
I thought his face was looking fuller, but he's difficult about letting me do anything with him, so I wasn't until yesterday I could positively tell something was wrong. And he was acting perfectly normal. Well, normal for him.
So, this morning I stayed home from work and called the vet's office when it opened. I got an appointment for ten fifteen and spent the next two hours crying. You know, about the usual things: Meg was going to die, I'm a terrible cat-owner, the vet was going to tell me I should have brought him in sooner, Meg deserves someone better than me, the vet was going to tell me I'm a terrible cat-owner for letting Meg go outside, Meg was going to die, I was going to die.
Nobody died. They took Meg's temperature (he had a fever), drained his abscess, and gave him a shot of antibiotics. Nobody said anything about how he should be an indoor cat. In fact, the vet said it's very difficult to change an outdoor cat to an indoor cat against his will. She also said he was a lovely cat, very well-behaved and sturdy.
I was instructed to keep Meg in the house for a few days.
I brought him home, left him in the house, and went to work for the afternoon. When I got home, I let him out.
I had groceries to bring in, and decided he could have a few minutes to run around and do his business. (He hates using his box. It's only for emergencies; the proper place to do one's business is outside.) He walked around and sniffed things while I unloaded groceries and came right in when I told him to. He's been sitting in the window in the kitchen ever since. He really is a remarkably good cat.
I've been watching The Pirates of Penzance because today is Leap Year Day, which makes it Frederic's birthday. If my figures are correct, he'd be forty years old. Well, forty birthdays old. I could watch On Catlike Tread over and over again.
In case you don't know, the story is this: Frederic was indentured to the Pirate King when he was a little boy because his nurse misunderstood her instructions. What she'd been told to do was indenture him to a pilot. But now Frederic is twenty-one and he's leaving the pirates. He loves them, but abhors what they do—although they're really lousy pirates. They never attack smaller vessels, or orphans. So everyone they meet claims to be an orphan. Anyway, Frederic vows to exterminate them.
Once ashore, he meets Mabel and her seven sisters. He and Mabel fall in love. Then the other pirates show up and try to abduct the sisters, to marry them against there will. (Because that's what pirates do.) Their father, the Major-General arrives, finds out who they are, and claims to be an orphan, so they leave the girls.
Plans are made to get rid of the pirates with Frederic leading a bunch of bobbies. But the Pirate King and Ruth (Frederic's former nurse) arrive to break some news: Frederic's contract says he's to stay with the pirates not until he turns twenty-one, but until his twenty-first birthday. And since he was born on Leap Year Day, that won't come until 1940. He is honor-bound to return to the pirates.
He's also honor-bound to tell them that the Major-General isn't really an orphan, which enrages the Pirate King, who swears vengeance. Frederic tells Mabel he has to go and she rallies the bobbies.
The pirates all come back and fight the bobbies. The Pirate King is just about to execute the Major-General when the constable calls upon him to surrender in the name of the Queen. And, because they love their queen, the pirates surrender. Then Ruth tells everyone that the pirates are really noblemen, to which the Major-General responds that they can then marry his daughter. And they all live happily ever after.
*Joe Mannix