Mike

Ball

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July 14, 2008

Mindy the Cat and the Elizabethan Collar

Cats are kind of strange.

I guess this will come as a surprise to absolutely nobody. For people who don’t much care for cats, it probably goes a long way toward explaining why they . . . well, don’t much care for cats. And for those of us who inexplicably do like the fuzzy little maniacs, I guess it is at least one of the reasons why we do.

It’s been a while since I’ve talked about my cats here. We’re down to two now, Libby, a.k.a. “The Phantom,” and Mindy, a.k.a. “I’m Not Fat, I’m Just Fluffy.” Aside from my wife and the vet, nobody living has actually seen Libby for a couple of years. I know she’s real, though, on account of the steady conversion of money to cat food then to stinky litter, with an occasional vet bill thrown in.

Mindy is, unfortunately, a little under the weather. A while back she developed some sort of itch in her right eye, so she used her cute little kitty claws to shred that eye to kitty burger. The vet does not recommend de-clawing a cat as old as Mindy, so she did the next best thing. She put an “Elizabethan collar” on her.

Now, I’ve been around cats all my life, and like most cat lovers I’ve happily experimented with any number of ways I could use to piss them off. Up to this point, trying to give them a bath was the hands-down winner, followed closely by coaxing them lovingly into a pet-carrier – have you ever tried to stuff a cougar into a cigar box?

I’m here to tell you that this collar explores whole new levels of cat pissed-off-ness!

The Elizabethan collar is a flexible blue vinyl cone thingy that ties around the cat’s neck and keeps her from getting her paws to her face. This serves to provide the cat with unimaginably increased incentive to get her paws to her face.

In the four days since we put the collar on Mindy, it really seems to be doing its job. We’ve been treated to 95 hours of hissing and baleful looks, along with methodically clawing the collar to shreds (I think she passed out from exhaustion for an hour or so yesterday).

And despite the fact that the little sweetheart has discovered the substitute therapeutic procedure of bashing her face repeatedly against a door frame, she just can’t quite get her claws on that eye, and so it is starting to look a tad less kitty burger-ish.

I’ve tried to imagine how frustrating it would be to have something like that Elizabethan collar put on me, especially if I was not able to really comprehend the reason for it. I might wonder if I was being punished for something. Or I might feel as if the people I loved and depended on for everything in my life were simply trying to make me miserable. In either case, I think I might be pretty angry with those people.

Fortunately, Mindy does not seem to feel that way. She knows darned well that I am personally responsible for that collar being on her, and despite all the hissing and baleful looks she still crawls up on my lap for a little comfort.

I guess that’s what real trust is all about. It seems like she has decided that as much as she hates that stupid collar, and as incomprehensible as the whole situation may be to her, I must have my reasons for putting it on her. And she won’t waste one moment holding a grudge.

Maybe people should learn to be as strange as cats.

Copyright © 2008, Michael Ball. Distributed exclusively by North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.