You know something’s not right when your cat staggers into the house, crouches under the table and howls like a werewolf. Having fed it dog food the previous day you suppose indigestion and carry on working. You know there’s probably something else not right with it when you see it trying to hide in a wardrobe and you know that it’s more than indigestion when you watch it spend a fruitless hour in the garden digging holes but not being able to deposit anything into them. We’re supposing constipation now and hope things will take care of themselves. Try to feed the cat tuna in oil to ease the problem but he’s not eating. Now there is definitely something very wrong and worst fears are confirmed when… well I won’t get too graphic but he’s obviously got an infection in his water works.
A couple of phone calls later and a trip to the Sunrise Café results in a cat box and some antibiotics. (Many thanks to Symi Animal Welfare.) But a visit to the vet in Rhodes is still needed the following day as there is no vet on the island. So here’s where the fun starts!
Not.
Not for me or the cat who we shall call Jack. Because that is his name.
The antibiotics we managed to get him to take the previous evening seemed to have helped him a little as he is not leaking so much blood, sorry, didn’t mean to mention that, and he is a little more vociferous than he was last night. Manage to hoodwink him into the cat box for the journey and, because he’s under the weather, he just accepts confinement. He doesn’t like being moved though and makes a faint fuss as we carry him down to the harbour where he sits, towel covered, and waits for the hydrofoil.
Now luckily Jack is deaf. Had he been a hearing cat he would have had something to say about the noise on the journey as he is put ‘outside’ on the hydrofoil – in that open air, unofficial smoking part that is covered with canvas. Actually the vibrations of the old boat seem to send him nicely to sleep and not even children and curious adults who come for a look and a prod upset his nap.
I’d heard that taxi drivers don’t like to take animals, on Rhodes and elsewhere, but as soon as I walked into the taxi rank and mispronounced the Greek words for ‘anyone know where the vet shop is?’ me and Jack got a ride immediately.
I have to say the small animal Vet, ‘Harry’, on Rhodes is very good and speaks excellent English. I’m at that learning stage where I can speak Greek and get away with it in most rational situations and if the native Greek speaker is patient and sympathetic but words like inter-uterine feline non-specific urethritis are still beyond me.
After a few minutes on the table Jack was keen to get back in his box, particularly after having his bladder squeezed and his back leg injected. Tablets were prescribed along with some foul smelling jelly that cats love (allegedly) and three kilos of special diet food to help rid him of any internal stonework or something… (gallstones I think.)
Now the thing about going to Rhodes for necessary private medical business, feline or human, is this: You have to see a specialist, vet or whatever and of course you need to do that first thing. You get off the boat at around 9.30 a.m. knowing that you have until 3.30 p.m. to get things done. But you don’t know how long things will take.
They never take as long as you think, well not in my case anyway – but then I’ve never had to use the public health services before and apparently they can take much longer. So the point is: I was done with the vet stuff by 10.30, leaving me five hours in Rhodes with a grumpy cat in a box. Worse: Jack is starting to feel better and is now livelier and louder than he has been for two days. Worse: he weighs six and a half kilos and the box must be carried away from me because it is wide – about a 45 degree angle from the body, play along at home with a few bags of sugar if you want to suffer the full benefit. Worse: the tax rank at the end of the ‘Vet Street’ is deserted.
But that’s o.k. Mandraki harbour is only a short walk through the old town, which is lovely in December as it’s empty and traditional and atmospheric…
But carrying six and half kilos of cat and three kilos of anti-gallstone biscuits and a rucksack and a coat in case it gets cold…
After a few stops to show Jack the Palace of the Masters, several fascinating excavations (he still wasn’t interested in holes in the ground) and the Knight’s Hospital I was ready to check into it myself. Sadly it is no longer taking patients so I soldiered on. Luckily I did not get lost in the medieval labyrinth and finally arrived at Mandraki where I was able to park the cat box and sit outside a café for coffee and sandwiches. Which I could hardly hold as I had lost the use of my forearms.
Four hours to wait until hydrofoil leaves. (Involving two trips to the public toilet, having to take cat with me and no chance of shopping for any of those completely unnecessary but only-available-in-Rhodes things that I normally come back with.)
Have mild panic attack that the wind will get up and we will be stuck on Rhodes for a few days with a cat in a box and no hotel that will accept us. Even if one did what would Jack do of an evening? He doesn’t like Chinese food and only falls asleep during films so the cinema is out of the question and he’s already banned from the Casino…
After four hours sitting on a bench at Mandraki and reading a very dull book we’re back on the boat and heading for home. Have called Neil to assist with carrying the nine and half kilos of cat and associated fodder back up the Kali Strata and I am looking forward to a quiet night in.
Not to be.
Worse.
We have to give the cat his tablets.
Have you ever tried to give a cat a tablet? I couldn’t write anything more apt than the following which I am grateful for Melanie and co. for finding:
How to give a cat a tablet |
