Cat Scratch Fever
Aug. 8th, 2004 09:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fatesfollyWhen you believe everything is all ironed out, wouldn't you know there would be a wrinkle?
I finally got everything settled with Amanda and Mandy and the bringing of the dogs to stay at Granny's on Friday night before the yard sale. They secured pet-sitting by a neighbor in Raleigh.
Amanda called on Friday afternoon around 4:00 and said they'd be on their way as soon as Mandy got off from work. I asked what time was that. 5:00. Okay... Mandy works 2.75 days a week out of a 40 hour a week job. She is the quintessential state worker. She stays home, she gets off early and she goes in late. So on the day before our big yard sale and they need to be getting East as soon as they can to help set up, what time does Mandy choose to work until?? 5 freaking o'clock.
Fine. They know traffic in Clayton during rush hour is a bitch and they know the usual 1.5 hour trip will be now 2.25 hours. Whatever.
So I expect them to arrive around 7:30. They pull up in the driveway at 8. There's MUCH still to be done, namely getting the heavy tables from my next door neighbor's utility room and finishing the pricing of all their junk. (I had already started on some of their stuff.)
So they drive up and immediately jump out of the car, saying "Kitty, (my pet name, short for Kitten... a decade+ old name we've called each other.).. Kitty, don't be mad."
Uh-oh.
"What," I say.
Apparently, on their way East, they saw a cat on the side of the road and the just so happened to have had a pet carrier they were going to sell in the yard sale. They stopped, chased the mother fucker down and caged him/her. (A little history: much like in the David Sedaris story where he recounts his sister witnessing a gruesome wreck, her only response is: "I hope there wasn't a dog in the backseat." Nevermind the now critically injured people... they're animal lovers from WAY back.)
The cat is loudly meowing. They tell me he/she is injured, sick, and malnourished. I'm not unfeeling. I ask if it is an emergency and if the cat is bleeding. No. But what do they do? They march themselves in the house and call the emergency vet number for my town. They reach the answering service, leave my number, and we stand around uncomfortably for a couple of minutes waiting for the callback. A doctor calls back and Amanda recounts the story. He's nonplussed. He tells her to feed the cat and give it rest. She's pissed. She hangs up the phone and berates my small town's vets. Meanwhile, Mandy is searching for a can opener (they stopped on the way into town at a grocery store and bought food, non-pop-top type.) I ask her what she's looking for and she tells me she needs my can opener to open the can of cat food.
Let me stop here and remind gentle readers that I am not an animal person. I did not grow up around animals, therefore, as an adult, I am extremely uncomfortable around them... especially cats. I am not fond of fish, either and most cat food that I can recall has an odor similar to a tuna cannery.
The look on my face at hearing she was going to use my good can opener to open a can of cat food spoke for itself. She slammed the drawer shut and dug the box of dry food out of her shopping bag, pissed.
Meanwhile, Amanda is looking for suitable shelter. She asks if they can let the cat out on my back porch. No. The back yard? No. (It's fenced in, but an ice storm two years ago cracked a tree in half, one large limb falling on the fence. The fence has never been properly repaired and there's a cat-sized hole in it.) I tried to explain this.
Jane was there and offered a dog carrier. She left to go home to retrieve it. Mandy left to buy a can opener. Amanda is petting the cat.
Now remember folks, there's a fucking yard sale in 9 short hours. There are NO tables out and half the shit isn't priced. (Their half.) But what are they doing??? Fooling with a fucking cat.
So I go outside to get the tables from the neighbor's. I start pricing stuff. Eventually, they all join me. Amanda asks meekly if I will allow the cat in my grandmother's house for the night. I reminded her that I did not want their dogs there and that I definitely would not want this half feral cat there. Tempers flared.
What made everything worse was that I felt I had done 90% of the work at this point. They were late. They were too pre-occupied with the cat. And on top of all of this, they were pricing things way too high.
When I have a yard sale, I do so out of laziness. I could haul this crap to Goodwill, but that's too much work. If I have a yard sale, I price things low enough so I do not have to haggle (I hate haggling, and despise it even more if it's not even 7am.) The way I look at it, these people are paying me a tuppence to cart my junk away. Case in point: a sweater shaver... it gets those annoying pills of lint off cheap sweaters. I had one. The price was a quarter. They had one. Their price? $2.00. Hell, people can buy one at Wal-Mart for 2 bucks. Price it so they want to buy it. I mentioned this to them and Mandy snapped that she wasn't going to give it away and Amanda asked if I thought they were going to re-price everything they had already priced. My only reason in saying anything in the first place was that I knew MY sweater shaver would sell and theirs would not. (And as it happened, we boxed THEIR shaver up at the end of the yard sale and took it to Goodwill, so in essence, they DID give it away. Mine sold.)
Anyway, they leave to spend the night at my grandmother's house and we go to bed. I have no idea what they did with the cat. I'm purposefully not going over to my grandmother's for a while, for fear I will smell cat when I walk in and know they let the cat in. They called another vet's office on Saturday morning and made it sound more dire. He told them to bring the cat in. They left the yard sale and took the cat to the vet. As it turns out, the cat was determined to be very old and very sickly. It would have cost a lot of money to determine whether the sickness was that feline leukemia or parasites or something else. The vet said he'd call the SPCA and that was as much that he could do. They left, teary eyed and mopey. When they return to my house, all they could do was sit in the house and cry.
For the Love of God!!! Kill me now! This was supposed to be a good weekend.
I finally got everything settled with Amanda and Mandy and the bringing of the dogs to stay at Granny's on Friday night before the yard sale. They secured pet-sitting by a neighbor in Raleigh.
Amanda called on Friday afternoon around 4:00 and said they'd be on their way as soon as Mandy got off from work. I asked what time was that. 5:00. Okay... Mandy works 2.75 days a week out of a 40 hour a week job. She is the quintessential state worker. She stays home, she gets off early and she goes in late. So on the day before our big yard sale and they need to be getting East as soon as they can to help set up, what time does Mandy choose to work until?? 5 freaking o'clock.
Fine. They know traffic in Clayton during rush hour is a bitch and they know the usual 1.5 hour trip will be now 2.25 hours. Whatever.
So I expect them to arrive around 7:30. They pull up in the driveway at 8. There's MUCH still to be done, namely getting the heavy tables from my next door neighbor's utility room and finishing the pricing of all their junk. (I had already started on some of their stuff.)
So they drive up and immediately jump out of the car, saying "Kitty, (my pet name, short for Kitten... a decade+ old name we've called each other.).. Kitty, don't be mad."
Uh-oh.
"What," I say.
Apparently, on their way East, they saw a cat on the side of the road and the just so happened to have had a pet carrier they were going to sell in the yard sale. They stopped, chased the mother fucker down and caged him/her. (A little history: much like in the David Sedaris story where he recounts his sister witnessing a gruesome wreck, her only response is: "I hope there wasn't a dog in the backseat." Nevermind the now critically injured people... they're animal lovers from WAY back.)
The cat is loudly meowing. They tell me he/she is injured, sick, and malnourished. I'm not unfeeling. I ask if it is an emergency and if the cat is bleeding. No. But what do they do? They march themselves in the house and call the emergency vet number for my town. They reach the answering service, leave my number, and we stand around uncomfortably for a couple of minutes waiting for the callback. A doctor calls back and Amanda recounts the story. He's nonplussed. He tells her to feed the cat and give it rest. She's pissed. She hangs up the phone and berates my small town's vets. Meanwhile, Mandy is searching for a can opener (they stopped on the way into town at a grocery store and bought food, non-pop-top type.) I ask her what she's looking for and she tells me she needs my can opener to open the can of cat food.
Let me stop here and remind gentle readers that I am not an animal person. I did not grow up around animals, therefore, as an adult, I am extremely uncomfortable around them... especially cats. I am not fond of fish, either and most cat food that I can recall has an odor similar to a tuna cannery.
The look on my face at hearing she was going to use my good can opener to open a can of cat food spoke for itself. She slammed the drawer shut and dug the box of dry food out of her shopping bag, pissed.
Meanwhile, Amanda is looking for suitable shelter. She asks if they can let the cat out on my back porch. No. The back yard? No. (It's fenced in, but an ice storm two years ago cracked a tree in half, one large limb falling on the fence. The fence has never been properly repaired and there's a cat-sized hole in it.) I tried to explain this.
Jane was there and offered a dog carrier. She left to go home to retrieve it. Mandy left to buy a can opener. Amanda is petting the cat.
Now remember folks, there's a fucking yard sale in 9 short hours. There are NO tables out and half the shit isn't priced. (Their half.) But what are they doing??? Fooling with a fucking cat.
So I go outside to get the tables from the neighbor's. I start pricing stuff. Eventually, they all join me. Amanda asks meekly if I will allow the cat in my grandmother's house for the night. I reminded her that I did not want their dogs there and that I definitely would not want this half feral cat there. Tempers flared.
What made everything worse was that I felt I had done 90% of the work at this point. They were late. They were too pre-occupied with the cat. And on top of all of this, they were pricing things way too high.
When I have a yard sale, I do so out of laziness. I could haul this crap to Goodwill, but that's too much work. If I have a yard sale, I price things low enough so I do not have to haggle (I hate haggling, and despise it even more if it's not even 7am.) The way I look at it, these people are paying me a tuppence to cart my junk away. Case in point: a sweater shaver... it gets those annoying pills of lint off cheap sweaters. I had one. The price was a quarter. They had one. Their price? $2.00. Hell, people can buy one at Wal-Mart for 2 bucks. Price it so they want to buy it. I mentioned this to them and Mandy snapped that she wasn't going to give it away and Amanda asked if I thought they were going to re-price everything they had already priced. My only reason in saying anything in the first place was that I knew MY sweater shaver would sell and theirs would not. (And as it happened, we boxed THEIR shaver up at the end of the yard sale and took it to Goodwill, so in essence, they DID give it away. Mine sold.)
Anyway, they leave to spend the night at my grandmother's house and we go to bed. I have no idea what they did with the cat. I'm purposefully not going over to my grandmother's for a while, for fear I will smell cat when I walk in and know they let the cat in. They called another vet's office on Saturday morning and made it sound more dire. He told them to bring the cat in. They left the yard sale and took the cat to the vet. As it turns out, the cat was determined to be very old and very sickly. It would have cost a lot of money to determine whether the sickness was that feline leukemia or parasites or something else. The vet said he'd call the SPCA and that was as much that he could do. They left, teary eyed and mopey. When they return to my house, all they could do was sit in the house and cry.
For the Love of God!!! Kill me now! This was supposed to be a good weekend.
