When I had a cat, it was a trauma for both of us to go to the vet’s: the cat was freaked out at the carrier, car ride, and strange place where he’d get shots, and I was upset because my cat Teddy didn’t know I was trying to help him.
From Earthporm.com we have “17 Cats Desperately Trying to Hide From and Escape the Vet.” It’s sad and funny at the same time: here are a few of the photos, but go see all of them. If you have cat-at-vet stories, post them in the comments.
First-timer; doesn’t know the drill:
A cat with more experience:
Notice ears flattened for maximum camouflage:
This cat knows how to hide!
This one’s titled “Cat wouldn’t come out of crate so owner took it apart. . . that didn’t work either.”
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Here’s a unique solution to the problem of house cats that get loose. It was suggested by Matthew Inman, creator of The Oatmeal, and named “The Kitty Convict Project.” As Inman notes on the page, 7 million pets go missing every year. Of these 26% of dogs get returned home but only 5% of cats. He gives the three reasons why cats are returned so rarely (guess), and suggests a solution:
It’s a good idea, I think, but first you’d have to educate ALL Americans about what to do when they see a cat with an orange collar! Well, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. . .
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Finally, from pedget.com we have a nice rear-window decal that’s ideal if a) you own a cat and b) have a rear-window wiper (I don’t). You can get the cats in either happy version (shown) or grumpy version (see site), and there’s a decal for the wiper, too. Only ten bucks for both decals!
h/t: Theo, Taskin, Lauren
I don’t have a pet but I do remember taking my son to the pediatrician for his first vaccination. My wife quickly exited before sonny was jabbed; need I say more!!
That pedget website also has a cheeseburger cat bed, and a $200 love doll for dogs to hump.
cannot stop laughing
My cat hyperventilated at the vet: it was only a minor checkup!
In the carrier, loudest miaow on record every 5 seconds, to vet and home. Shut up the moment I got into our own street: smell of the air, I suppose, she scarcely could have located the turns.
The first vet visit was still fun for my cat, he sat on the table, looked at the vet: “Hi! Wanna play?” The shots changed that attitude fast, he tried to bite the vet! Full angry kitten mode.
Kitty hated the crate, he would meow constantly, sometimes high, sometimes deep throaty. I got asked: “Do you have two cats in there?”
*sigh* I knew something was seriously wrong on the last trip to the vet, he was quiet during that trip. Yeah, almost complete kidney failure, putting him to sleep was the compassionate thing to do.
My olde beloved cat, Chin-Chin, would run and hide whenever she saw our picnic basket. That was the ‘crate’ we would use to take her to the vet.
My old cat Bongo, who looked quite a bit like that car wiper blade cat, had a warning on her chart at the vet, “Do not try to take temperature.” Haha, good old Bongo.
Not quite an at-the-vet story:
We adopted an 8 year-old tabby last November; her staff (family friend) passed away. She makes the 3rd cat in the house.
I soon made an appointment with our vet for a wellness check (I had reason to believe she needed it, I was right but fortunately nothing serious(far from blaming former staff, he had his own difficult health problems to deal with)).
Moments before leaving, I retrieved the carrier. The other two who saw me took no chances and bolted into hiding.
There’s a problem with the orange cat-collar idea.
Bright, reflective, convict-orange pet-collars already exist: they’re used for hunting-dogs.
Implement this idea, and you’ll confuse people into thinking that your runaway cat is somehow trained to fetch ducks and pheasants.
Stupid though the idea of hunting dogs is for Homo sapiens var. urbanus , if you’re going to have one, a reflective and daylight-bright collar isn’t that bad an idea. Works for traffic too.
What surprises me is that it hasn’t been a default for decades? When did that reflective fabric come on the market? 1970?
That said, most of my rucksacks and rain coats don’t have built-in reflectivity either. Whenever the wife is trying to persuade me to buy a new one, the criterion just falls off the list against the question of “why”?
I love the picture of that cute orange kitten looking st the door. He is so small in his surroundings!
Does look very overwhelmed, doesn’t s/he?
Me too!
Smart little thing already knows what a door is, though. 🙂
I have two kitties. They are both rather friendly, but one gets overwhelmed by strange surroundings more than the other. Last time I took them to the vet, Jade curled up on my lap whenever she had a chance while Pan was more interested in poking his nose is everything and trying to knock the bird-video-showing TV off the wall. He just doesn’t seem to get discouraged.
I had a coworker come over and feed them over Christmas, when it got particularly cold and dry outside, prime static electricity weather. She said she could pet Pan all she wanted, but Jade would get shocked a couple of times and leave, giving her a look of betrayal.
Unfortunately, Jade is the one who has had most of the health issues. She ate some string and had to have emergency surgery to remove it. She was scarily quiet on the way to the vet. Then she had to get the staples taken out of her stomach. That vet had air pressure issues, and whenever the vet opened the back door, the one to the main office would open. I was usually good at closing it, but I was trying to get her in her carrier, and, well… Let’s just say the office staff got tested on their cat wrangling skills.
Several years ago we had a large orange tiger-tabby named Thistle (whom my son & his friends renamed Catzilla).
Thistle was actually a real…well, pussycat by nature until he got any sense of a vet visit in the offing. Even the most trained of technicians couldn’t control him when he went insane at such times.
Eventually we’d tried quite a few hoped-for remedies. One was what I called a kitty straight jacket–basically a strong nylon bag with a neck hole for the occupant’s head to stick through that could be closed snugly around his neck with built in Velcro.
The rest of the bag could be zipped closed and there were various ports that could be zipped or velcroed open or closed to allow access to certain body parts.
We tried that exactly once.
Next we tried tranquilizers. We worked our way up to a dose beyond which the vet was afraid to go; we’d administer the pills at home, wait for them to take effect and, when Thistle was walking around like a drunken sailor about to pass out we’d get him into his carrier. Invariably, at the vet’s, he’d somehow manage to come to full psychotic banshee mode and we were back to square one.
The vets thought maybe he’d be “more comfortable” at home, so once they came to our house. We used the Ping-Pong table downstairs as an examination platform. This seemed to be working until the vet started acting vetty with him, at which point Catzilla took over. The vets (a married couple) had come prepared with thick leather gauntlets, and those came out, plus my large strong husband came down to help with the immobilization. Plans of course not going as expected, my husband took a gruesome bite to the heel of his palm and the syringe went flying.
After this the vets decided that since Thistle was an indoor cat anyway, and never came into contact with other felines, perhaps he didn’t need to get his vaccinations quite as frequently as advised…
Can’t stop laughing :D:D:D
Why didn’t that work? Testing 😀 😉 🙂
Must need spaces.
Glad it caught you at the right time. 😀
Also, thanks for doing the WP test; will come in handy if only I can remember it.
My current furry brother had no problem with the vet the first time. Brought him right there when he adopted me before going home– good, too, as he had pretty much every parasite they look for except tapeworms. He was cool and friendly, making biscuits an purring the whole time. I didn’t have a carrier, so a beer cooler (open top, of course) was the used, and it was not a problem.
Follow up visit, not a problem. He got snipped, came home and all was ok. Follow up for that one, fine.
A year later and time for a checkup. He was not happy. He tolerated it, but I couldn’t get him in the carrier, or he beer cooler, so he went with harness and leash, which at that point he was comfortable with. The next time the harness went on, he broke it. A dog harness and leash, not cat.
Next year, the carrier. After rescheduling the appointment, as I needed to go to the emergency room for stitches– he REALLY did not want to get in the carrier– I did finally get him to the vet. He came out of the carrier, threw his front paws around my neck, buried his face under my chin, and sobbed. That is the only word I can find. It is the word the vet tech used. She said she had never seen or heard a cat act like that. He hadn’t done that before, so I had no response.
The battle has occurred a couple more times, and he is smart. More of a challenge each time. I fear that at some point he will be sick and really need to go and it will require calling in a team with darts. The funny thing is, once the vet starts, he is ok. Not calm, not shut down, but ok. No battle, no hiss, no hiding. Just resigned to it without major stress response (panting, ears back, etc)
Cats are weird.
I was sure I’d replied to this yesterday! Maybe I mistyped my name or eddress again and it’s gone into needs-approval hell.
Sigh. And somehow that got prematurely posted.
Once again, from the top–it sounds as if your little neurotic could give Thistle a run for his money. Except, of course, for the settling down during the actual exam part.
“He came out of the carrier, threw his front paws around my neck, buried his face under my chin, and sobbed.”
That is too sweet!! 😀
Yes, with Thistle we also considered using the Ballisti-Vet (Google-able).
Roolz be damned. Here’s a real cat tail.
http://imgur.com/3sod85D
Ah, see what happens when you anger the Roolz gods! 😀
I had a look at your intended subject on imgur–that moggie would indeed appear to have the biggest-tail trophy all sewn up.
Now, which gods did I rile up? When I first clicked on your post I got the “this image cannot be displayed” message. But no sooner do I post my snark but the image appears here just as you intended.
Off to propitiate something…
Do one for me, please… 🙂
😀
Our WordPress Fu ain’t so hot today, is it?
Had a male tabby once, a real handsome cat.
He hated travelling in cars.
I lured him into a cardboard box and shut the lid – he was okay with that. But as soon as the car started moving the scrabbling and howling from inside the box reached panic proportions. So, having made sure all windows were shut, I tried letting him out. BIG mistake! Ever tried driving with a cat in full panic mode, claws out and trying to break the sound barrier, ricocheting off everything inside the car including you? 🙁
cr
Can’t say that I have! Thank god! 😀
But I once made a mistake by letting a cat out of its carrier when it started to get carsick. Turns out a vomity cat in a carrier is preferable to a cat retching all over the car.