At the Vet

It was many nights at the veterinary clinic.  We not only had to wait for the ride after the husband’s office hours, there’s also this famed Dubai traffic gnarl.  Besides, the veterinary clinic’s open from 5 pm to 10 pm.  Thus it’s always night for us at the vet.

One night our wait was longer than usual.  There were a good number of customers.  I suppose it’s correct to call people the customers and the animals the patients.

There was that lady in the usual Mideast robes.  She comes weekly, she said, for her white, longhaired cat’s bath and grooming because the cat gets nasty if she didn’t get a bath at least once a week.  There, at the veterinarian’s table, was a Persian-Angolan cat enjoying the massage and the hair dryer.

By then I’ve lost mark of our trips to the vet.  Two of our cats have been alarmingly sick.  They hadn’t eaten for a week and their weights were plummeting.  When they also refused water, I reminded the husband that it would only take three days and they’d be goners.  We owe it to them, he said.  If the husband was thinking what I was thinking, I believe it was that we could be too late.

A sickening pattern followed.  The cats recovered briefly, the symptoms returned, and again off to the vet we went.  It seemed I had become the customer whose appearance was worrying because it meant the treatment wasn’t working.
It must be virus because if it were bacteria, they’d be fine by now, the lady vet said.  How could they get sick when they are indoor cats, in a fifth floor flat at that, I said.  It could be in the air, the male vet answered.  They’re a husband and wife team of vets; the lady is Chinese, the man is Arab.

Did he marry?  The lady vet asked.  It took time to digest her question. Surely she meant if the cat had mated, when it could get infected.  I couldn’t laugh though; I was too worried over our cats.  But I didn’t forget that local culture dictates that pre-marital sex is a crime.  No, he cannot marry, I answered.  You neutered him last July.

Pet owners, strangers to each other, get to talk and smile and are less impersonal inside veterinary clinics because of something common? sick pets; dogs and cats, mostly, though there was one time when a strange animal that was nearest a porcupine as I imagine porcupines to be was crawling at the clinic.

A man in the usual Arab garb came in and retrieved something from his pocket.  It was a very small kitten whose rashes he wanted treated.  Another man in Arab garb smoothened the hair of his cat in front of us, treating us with some unwelcome flying cat hair.

A white male Westerner carried in his arms, as if it were a baby, a golden cat.  I stared because it’s as if Garfield had come to life.  It was cats galore and dogs galore, really.  Never had I been in a veterinary clinic with so many patients.
Another Caucasian, a young man who could pass off as an information technology guy any day, had a pitiful looking puppy.  All along, while a series of injections was administered, he kept whispering assurances and touching his cheek to the puppy’s.  The puppy needed to stay for close follow-up treatments, and the man left behind a bag of dog food. The puppy’s pneumonia has gone too far, the vet said.

We had our two sick cats admitted too, one after the other. I went home and cleaned the rest room designated as their temporary sick bay, and cried.  That these ornery alley cats are as precious as those expensive purebred cats, there’s no doubt.  I phoned the vets every night, afraid of what I will hear.

Our two cats are back home now, on the road to full recovery.  The daily glucose injections that the vets administered saved their lives.  As for the bills, we were charged very much less than their usual fees.  Maybe it’s because our cats are the kind that hardly anybody wants, or maybe veterinarians, like pet owners who get to meet at veterinary clinics, find kinship.  Taking care of pets isn’t a shared lifestyle or a way of life.  It’s just plain, simple affection.

(27 Jan 2008)