Today was Vet Day for Calpurnia. She was due for a checkup and some blood work and I wanted to ask the vet about the sneezes. Calla isn’t exactly afraid of going to the vet, but she doesn’t like not being in control of her surroundings either. She has things going pretty smoothly around here, all things considered.
I was running a bit behind and didn’t do my usual prep for a vet visit – getting the carriers down and set up before collecting the cats. Instead I grabbed Calla and took her out to the garage and started to pull her box down from its high shelf for her. One hand for the box, which was on another, and her tucked into my side like a fuzzy football. A protesting fuzzy football!
There was a certain amount of banging of the boxes, and Calla doesn’t like the garage so she was getting pretty loud. This is supposed to be meaningful. She’s a quite a quiet cat in normal conditions, so much so that when she gives a soft warning mew when one of the boys violates her space they act like a rattlesnake has rattled instead of a Persian mewed. But her pipes are still there when she wants to use them.
She was good in the car and in the exam room during the weighing, just giving an odd Force 2 Meow to tell everyone how tough she was. She’s normally not that hard to control on the table, but she has a magnetic attraction towards the edge nearest the carrier. As soon as I let her she was down and at the carrier, and it only took her a second to realize that the front door was closed and the top open and vault in ready to go home.
On a previous visit she was in such a hurry to get in she ran into one with Julius inside already and pushed her way right past him to the back. I’ve never seen him so surprised…no, there was one other time, when she was trying to run inside and she ducked between his front and back legs and ran under him.
When the Vet came in for the exam, she was so busy gushing over how pretty Calla was that she had the devil of a time looking at the ears and teeth. Usually I keep the cats from squirming too much by holding them against me and they submit with reasonable grace. This time the vet was trying to get some pets in and Calla was using her considerable squirming powers to thwart the exam. Did this vet think she was dealing with an ordinary cat?
Finally I had mercy on the poor woman and helped get Calla under control. Then she took her away to get blood taken and her claws clipped. Claws Clipped!!
They obviously had no idea of the forces they were playing with. I could hear her giving some Warnings of Dire Portent now and again. It seemed to take a while – quite a while but finally she came back in perched in a nice carrier with a thick pillow cushion. This was odd because my carrier was right here with me in the exam room! Calpurnia had apparently run right into this one and took it over so firmly that the techs thought it belonged to her.
At the checkout the tech was gushing about how pretty she was and how nice it must be to have a ‘talkative cat’ that you can have a nice conversation with. Poor Calpurnia! All that tough talk and the silly girl thought it was idle chatter.
At least around here we understand her properly.
ThreeCatYard 
Isn’t it funny how you have to fight to shove them into the carrier initially, but once they’re in the vet’s office? First, the carrier usually has to be disassembled to get the cat out, then once they’re out, they can’t WAIT to get back in, knowing they’re going home.
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For mine the problem is more catching them when they hear the noise of you getting the carrier out. If you manage to grab them they run into it if you put them in front with the door open.
It may help that the vet is cat-only so the waiting room and back area is a lot less stressful.
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I concur with those who tell you that Calpurnia is beautiful….she is! My mom used to have problems getting her cat into the cat carrier whenever she needed to go to the vet. I’d have to help, and we finally got the idea of putting the carrier on its side (door side facing up) and then holding Mittens by the scruff of the neck and lowering her into the carrier. It worked, every time, for us (although it might be difficult if you have an extra large cat).
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Her current carrier has a door on top which would probably help considerably with the procedure you describe.
Before I got this one, I took Calla to the groomer in January in her old one which turned out to be a little small. when I came back to see the cut, the groomer couldn’t get her out. She even held it door down and tried to shake her out but Calla was able to brace herself and stay in. I had to reach in to get her and pull her out, which was tough even without her being actually mad or that afraid.
I had to go buy a larger one right after that.
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Poor Calpurnia, so misunderstood.
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I have to lower my kitties in as Susan says, and then disassemble when I get there. I get Spoken To all the way there and back.
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Or cat used to howl all the way to the vets and then uttered not a sound on the way back. I guess that the GPS her whiskers were connected to told her she was going home.
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