A cat in a dog blog?

Dieter has had some troubles off and on with ripping his dew claws. It's happened a couple times. Then just this past Saturday, he was chasing a toy in the kitchen, and in the process he slid into the dog gate. This time he ripped his "pinky" claw. Now normally we trundle him off to the vet to have it checked out. But Lloyd's just gone through some pretty major surgery and isn't supposed to wrangle an 80-pound dog for a while.

Luckily, our vet has a Visiting Vet service, so Dr Vigil came to the house, trimmed the torn claw, gave Dieter an antibiotic shot and a shot for pain, and even did a blood draw for his heartworm test. He put a muzzle on Dieter...just in case. But he was laughing, because while he was muzzling the dog, Dieter was happily wagging his tail. Again, Dieter makes friends and impresses people with his great temperament.

So the headline of this post mentioned a cat. Here's why.

Rory's opinion is the same about the dog and the Visiting Vet.

Dr Vigil usually comes to the house to round up Mimsy and Rory, the feral cats I took in back in 2004. They've come a long way on the friendliness scale, but there's no way they will let me catch them and put them in a cat carrier. So Dr Vigil comes over and we have a tag team set up. Lloyd has a fishing dipnet to catch a cat; I try to throw a towel over the flailing, trapped cat; and Dr Vigil tries to give them their shots without getting bitten. One time poor Mimsy got hopelessly caught in the dipnet and she said it was like being on some wild ride at Great America.

In spite of Mimy's travails, it's always been Rory (Mimsy's son) who is the most timid and afraid. Heck, it's taken him more than 10 years to even let me pet him. Last night as I was doling out the cat food, only Mimsy showed up. I just figured Rory was off doing something else, like sleeping. But later, when the cat treat bag didn't lure him, I began to wonder if something was wrong.

Who's there? Is that vet guy gone?

Then it dawned on me. He saw Dr Vigil come in and recognized his voice. "Oh, no. I'm not letting that guy get anywhere near me." Rory's favorite hiding spot is behind a large bookcase in the living room and I'm sure that's where he was.

He finally emerged about 10 PM last night, looking over his shoulder ever step of the way.

You just can't be too careful these days!