Basket Case

My best furry buddy had another tough night last night, but he made sure everyone else was suffering right along with him. He did not suffer alone nor in silence.

I noticed that one of Hakeem's fangs was sticking into his lip last night, and although that didn't hinder his love for food (nothing ever does), he did seem preoccupied with his mouth and he took to sleeping in a spot his never has before, which is one of those things cats do that bums me out because it usually means they're not feeling well. I made a quick call to Dr. Hedges who made room for him late last night at his office. On the way there, we picked up Hakeem's Grandma Judy, who is always very helpful when it comes to transporting the 25 pound beast to the place he feels deserves a special little place in Hell. Packed in his purple laundry basket with a purple towel underneath him and one on top of him, he entered the vet's office with the loudest, longest hiss in feline history. I told the vet tech it was just Hakeem's way of saying hello. She didn't buy it.

In the exam room, Hakeem kept up his defenses and, really, never let them down. I always spend an inordinate amount of time trying to convince the doc and the tech that he's the most awesome cat of all time and Grandma Judy usually slips in the story about the time we brought him to the nursing home and all the residents loved him because he was so nice, but I could tell the vet tech didn't believe us by the way she wanly asked, "Really?" I couldn't help but notice that as she held him down, wearing the elbow-length leather falcon handler gloves that kept Hakeem from killing her, she seemed rather skeptical.

Hakeem was screaming so much that the vet had no trouble spotting the bad fang, he just looked inside his mouth during one of my kitty's ten second-long screeches. Then the doc grabbed a medical pliers and simply yanked the entire loose fang from Hakeem's lower jaw, much to Hakeem's surprise. He said oftentimes in older cats the teeth will simply fall out when the root rots (yum!), which Hakeem's was trying to do, and he wouldn't even need any antibiotics. All fixed! Well, almost. Hakeem has that pesky anal sac issue I've mentioned before and, as long as I was paying for an office visit, I had the vet and tech express them. Yes, I'm talking about the anal sacs. All I'm going to tell you is that at one point, while they tag teamed my boy in his purple basket and the doc had Hakeem in - shall we say - a compromising position, Dr. Hedges suddenly yelled "Look out!" to the vet tech. I won't tell you why, I'll leave that to your imagination. Not that the tech could hear the vet's yelling over Hakeem's, I'm pretty sure all of New Brighton could hear him. But, the important thing is that my boy was back to his regular self the second he got back into the car in his purple laundry basket after his awful ordeal.

All's well that ends well. My boy has been purring for twenty-four hours straight and drooling where the fang is now missing. My dad said he's a feline hillbilly now. I'm afraid he might be right.