I've always heard about crazy cat ladies (henceforth referred to as CCL) but I'd never met one.... until today. I understood the term 'cat lady,' that is pretty straight forward, but I always wondered why crazy was thrown into the mix. I mean really....crazy? psycho? insane?
At the beginning of the week a post-doc in the lab began fostering a kitten for the SPCA for a two week period. She started her story by telling me that she doesn't want to name the cute little button in order to prevent becoming attached. **right** What transpired between then and now is truly miraculous. It's a testament to how easily we humans can be broken.
This animal runs her life. It all began a couple of days ago when the poor little kitten got sick (and with animals, there are only two kinds of sick- front or back) which sparked a whole sequence of events that can best be summarized in what I just heard while we were all gathered eating pizza. I was in a groove, working on my ninth slice of free pizza, listening to CCL tell us how happy she was that Sasha was feeling so much better, and she dropped, "and then I stimulated her by massaging her anus." She simply stated this matter-of-factly after describing how she stimulated her stomach with a cotton swab. And then she went on explain that naturally, NATURALLY, as in the natural world, animals use tongues to do such things (you know, like dogs and mice do- of course). As if somehow because she didn't use her tongue I should understand. Call me crazy, but I think that is the type of thing you leave to veterinary professionals. I mean, yeah, we work in a lab, but come on! We are a yeast lab for a reason. I'm also trying to eat!
My friends, that is the definition of a crazy cat lady.
BUT, I will have to admit, she is a very cute kitten...
The whole scenario reminded me of the Matthew Broderick/Meg Ryan movie Addicted to Love. In one scene they are sitting at in a diner plotting how best to ruin the lives of their exes, whilest falling in love, and Maggie (Meg Ryan) shares this story about the nature of love- and in a rather dramatic fashion.
"When I was a kid, my father had this dog that started to get all weak and sickly. He takes it to the vet, he examines it and says a maggot must have laid eggs in the dog's butt. The baby maggots have crawled up, now they've started to grow, and eventually they're gonna eat the dog alive from the inside. He says it should be put to sleep, because it's an old dog anyway. But father won't do it. He takes the dog home, he puts it on the bed, he reaches up into the dog, picking out the maggots with his finger, one by one. It takes him all night, but he gets every last one. That dog outlived my father. That's love, Sam."
**CCL wanted me to clafiry that in no way did she use her hand or tongue, but she dipped a cotton swab into warm water and gently massaged Sasha's anal sphincter.
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