UberMouse Meets His Nemesis

Brent and I woke up last night to incredibly loud crashing noises. First thought: break-in by someone unaware that there's not that much to steal? Second thought: crazed wild animal? Possum, maybe? Surely a chipmunk couldn't possibly make that much noise.

Second thought was half-right. Crazed animal, yes. But not wild. Well, only temporarily wild, I guess.

Tiamat caught her first mouse. Unfortunately, after bloodying it and leaving a grisly trail through the dining room and kitchen, she chased it under the radiator in the hall. This was an unsatisfactorily anticlimactic ending for our feline Mighty Hunter, so she swiped at it, and got her paws good and stuck on the glue trap Brent had set out months ago in our failed attempts to defeat the UberMouse.

That's when she started tearing around the place in a frenzy, knocking shit over and making a general ruckus.

4:09 a.m., to be precise.

She trusts me enough that when she saw me, she paused in her flight to let me size up the situation. Then she took off again, to take refuge under our bed.

With the glue trap.

And the mouse stuck on it.

When I tried to coax her out she panicked again, and this time, managed to knock the glue trap in squeezing out between the bedframe and the wall. So that was helpful. It's always good to catch a lucky break now and then.

So I took the glue trap with the mouse on it down to the kitchen, which is when I discovered that our kitchen floor looked like a Tom and Jerry murder scene, by stepping in the evidence with bare feet. Lucky break, over.

Then I looked at the trap, and saw the mouse was still breathing.

Argh. Not that it freaked me out. But now, on top of everything else, I can't help but recast the whole flight of terror from the mouse's point of view. How awful. I mean, you escape the terrifying cat (who, by the way, has no teeth, so what she would do with a mouse when she catches one?) and run right into a glue trap and are mysteriously immobilized. Then, you get pulled out of your hiding place by the monster chasing you, but your end isn't quick and clean. Instead, you get a Romp of Terror up and down stairs and under tables and beds. Finally, some looming shadow comes and puts you out of your misery (details unbeknownst to me, thankfully).

No more glue traps, that's for damn sure.

Kitty

So, some of you may remember a couple of years ago we discovered that Tiamat a.k.a. "Kitty" has chronic stomatitis. You may remember this because we freaked out when the vet told us we would probably have to extract all her teeth--and eventually definitely have to. That kind of procedure costs thousands of bucks...and as Brent kept pointing out with a sort of anthropocentric outrage, we haven't even been to the people dentist in years now.

So, since finding this out, our Princeton vet advised to try an initial treatment of periodic steroid shots and occasional antiobiotics to control the inflammation and infections in poor Kitty's mouth. I can still remember being 8 months pregnant with Clare, and getting down on the floor and trying to wrestle Tiamat into a position where we could squirt an alcohol-based antibiotic solution into her mouth with a syringe. (Yeah. That worked just super. After a couple rounds of that we called the vet back and said, um, NO. Alternatives? Oh, they say, just try putting it in her food. WHY didn't you SAY SO, people!!!)

Since then, every few months, we make another vet appt and take her in for a shot (or two) and another round of Clindamycin (or two). But like any stopgap measure, it loses efficacy after awhile. Plus, at $120 a visit, not even this stopgap is something we can really afford. But we have to do something for our kitty, and this has been the best we could do for her.

And never, until today, has anyone suggested that I call the Humane Society. Who runs a full-service clinic. With dental procedures. That existed for the purpose of providing necessary care for animals with owners of limited means.

Dr. Janet Ficarra at Downtown Veterinary Clinic on 9th Avenue and 19th St., YOU ARE MY CAT'S HERO.

I rushed home, called the Humane Society, asked a couple questions, and WOW. I still haven't talked to Brent, and services aren't free, but it's doable, and really, considering what it costs to make an appt every couple months at this point, more cost-effective than the steroid and antibiotics that aren't working well anymore.

So WHY oh WHY didn't this occur to me? Or WHY is it only now, with vet #3, that I get this recommendation in response to my guilty mumbled explanations of "I know we need to do it, but we just can't right now..."?