You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
A cat with 9 lives plus one.
Tiger is 18 years old.
She is perky and friendly. She has yellow-green eyes that follow you when you stand. She meows when she is hungry and she sits at the door when she goes outside. She loves to be outside like a boy scout earning a merit badge for lounging.
She lounges under the picnic table, sitting on the metal base which keeps her cool.
When she’s not lounging, she’s lurking. The back yard is her jungle, where Tiger comes alive. She silently stalks the grass and lets the wind blow through her fur that’s streaked with specks of black and white.
Tiger is an energetic cat for 18 years old. She has a meow in her step, a bounce in her paws.
When she walks, her big pooch tummy sways over the blades of grass.
Tiger doesn’t wear a collar. Tiger doesn’t go to the doctor regularly. Tiger is way behind on all her shots. Tiger is a part of Darwin’s natural selection proving that the mighty will survive. So far so good for this back yard barracuda, she is one of Darwin’s chosen.
But the other day, Tiger began licking her stomach. Through all that matted fur you could see something red and swollen. Was it a bug bite? Was it something worse? It didn’t look good, kind of like a red gummy worm that had melted on the dashboard of your car.
Tiger is 18 years old everyone kept saying. That’s pretty old for a cat, you know.
18 is pretty old for a cat.
According to Wikipedia, the average life expectancy for male indoor cats at birth is around 12 to 14 years, with females usually living a year or two longer. However, there have been reports of cats reaching into their 30s, with the oldest known cat, Creme Puff, dying at a verified age of 38.
Tiger is queen of all she surveys. When it comes to car travel she is a chicken. I don’t think she likes the roar of the road, the rumble of the engine, the gyration of the wheels.
So the day of Tiger’s vet visit arrives.
Dr. Beuchamp’s hopsital is expecting her at 9:45 am.
They supply us with a cat carrier the size of a grey hound bus for.
I put on my work gloves and jeans, the equivalent of a radiation suit for feline preparedness.
Tiger is a friendly cat, but when someone tries to take you out of your jungle, sometimes you can get pissy.
I pick her up. She meows but doesn’t fight. It’s shocking to her as my two big work gloves surround her life and change her day.
I open the carrier door and place her inside.
Click.
The door locks into place and Tiger sits down on the bright blanket placed inside the plastic crate.
She looks out the tiny window. She is not sure what to do. She meows, she sticks a paw through the opening, pawing at the backyard vision, her jungle, now a jail house away.
I pick up the cat carrier. It’s heavy, cumbersome, like carrying a refrigerator box down a fire escape.
I head down the garage stairs. The crate bangs into the door well.
Meow.
Tiger is scared. Her world is a Godzilla movie crashing through a New York City Skyscraper.
I place the crate in the back seat.
Meow. Meow. Meow.
She is upset. Who wouldn’t be?
You’re 18 years old, the queen of the jungle and someone you trust wearing work gloves plucks you out of your kingdom and puts you in a plastic cage.
Now your cage is rumbling bumbling stumbling through the hills and around turns. The crate is loud and the radio playing and the environment unfamiliar.
It’s like a moon launch all you have is sunscreen to protect you from the rigors of outer space.
Meow. Meow. Meow.
Bang.
I put Tiger on the counter at the animal hospital.
“Hi. Who do we have here?” the nurse asks.
Meow. Meow. Meow.
“This is Tiger. She is not happy. She is here for a lump like thing on her stomach.”
“How old is Tiger?” she asks going through her computer.
“18. A spry 18!”
“Hmmm, ” she says staring at the screen. “Says here that Tiger was 6 months old in 2002.”
“Yeah?”
“Well that makes her like 13 , not 18.”
Tiger’s owner stares at the receptionist, wondering how that is possible.
“No. My son was four when I got her and he’s 20 now, so she’s 18.”
“Is that the new math?” I say out loud, now realizing the cat is much younger than I thought.
“No, she’s 18, I know it,” Tiger’s owner says.
I stare at the cat’s owner and laugh.
That would make her 16, not 18 I think. But then again my math skills are suspect too.
“Well our records show she’s 13,” the receptionist says.
“Man you guys are good,” I blurt out laughing. “We came in here thinking Tiger was on her last legs, 18 years old, festering and over the hill. And with one click of your computer screen you took 5 years off her life.”
The receptionist laughs.
“You charge more for that?” I continue. “You should make that part of your facebook platform. Dr. Beuchamps five years of life give-a-way.”
Meow. Meow. Meow.
Suddenly I view Tiger not as a senior citizen but a cranky old feline with a mid-life crisis. She is healthy and happy and not even aware that she just got a five year lease on life.
An extra life for a cat? That’s like 3 more falls off the roof and a garbage truck tire running over her tail.
Wouldn’t that be cool if you could go to the doctor and get 5 more years?
Hey doc, I feel terrible. I have this festering hair ball on my stomach that I can’t stop licking.
“Oh, well how bout I take 5 years off your actual age? That should make it all better.”
Tiger got a couple of shots and before you know it was home k in her back yard dominion, queen of all surveys.
She went back to the shady space by the fence, her swaying stomach pooch hovering just over the grass that needs cutting.
She doesn’t look a day over 14 I think to myself smiling.
Tiger sits in the grass and licks her paw.
Just another day for a senior citizen who got a 10th life with the click of an enter button.
Life’s crazy™