I guess a lot of statements make a lot more sense when heard in context.
Our cat, Puck, came to live with us in November of 2009. Heather had fallen in love with him when she took her ugly dog to the vet (the same vet who told Heather her dog was ugly). Puck was entirely one shade of gray, even his eyes. We named him after the playful imp in Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. He had been taken from his mother very early, and was so tiny he fit completely in your hand. After he was old enough, we got his shots and worm treatment and he finally started to grow. Last year we took him in to get ‘tutored,’ and he bulked up a little bit. Still, he’s kind of a small cat.
All cats are weird. His special kind of weirdness is that he can’t walk more than 10 or 15 feet without flopping over on the ground. He’s so lazy / mellow that not much really seems to bother him. I’ve seen him lay down on wet cement and even snow. Besides being lazy, he likes to get into fights. He probably sneaks booze, too. We should have named him something more upstanding, I guess, but who wants a cat named ‘John Wesley?’
Anyway, Heather adopted this guy and then he adopted our youngest daughter, who spoils him. Friday when she was petting him she noticed he had kind of a soft lump on his head. So she squished it (kind of a natural impulse, I think–we used to squish that little soft spot on our baby brother’s head, but that’s probably why he is way he is, too). Puck got up and loped off to eat, where he was spotted by our oldest.
“What did you do to your cat?”
[note: the following is not fit for the squeamish]
The youngest ran in to take a look. That soft spot on his head was full of pus, which was oozing over his head. Both girls worked to get him cleaned up as they gagged. When I came home they had me take a look at him. I put alcohol on his head until I could tell he felt it and we let him go. I looked up online how to treat this better, and found a few helpful tips as well as a handy tip for helping to prevent this, as it typically shows up in male cats: get him fixed. So much for that.
The next day the bump was back and into the vet he went. The vet pulled the hair off of the bump and then, like our daughter, squished the bump and an even more unholy amount of pus came out. Then he got a shot and the daughter got a bottle of nasty drops to give him.
Before we dropped the kids off Saturday so we could go to the store, Heather called out to make sure Puck got his vet-prescribed medical care:
“Don’t forget to squish your cat’s head!”
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