RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33915, 7 August 1975, Page 18

RANDOM REMINDER

MUTE FAREWELL

A veterinarian’s surgery is a notable meeting place for the less articulate members of the animal kingdom. On their owners’ knees in the waiting-room — mostly it is the ladies who take along the sick pets, sometimes accompanied by the children — a kitten will look warily at a tortoise and a terrier will curl a lip at a frog. One owner will reflect angrily that it was hardly necessary for another to wear mink in order to turn up with a magpie. Cats may not be the most delicate of animals but they seem to be in constant need of a visit to the vet for one little thing or another. They have to be looked after for peculiarly feline complaints such as cat ’flu, and fur balls in the stomach. When there are two

cats in the family the cat sick parade is exactly twice as frequent as when there is only one cat in the family. A two-cat family in a northern Christchurch suburb had, over the years, presented its pets to the vet dozens of times. Back in the mist of ages it had started with neutering for the wee male kitty. Treatments in due course had continued for an abcess over the ear, a wound on the back after a particularly good fight, a growth on the lip, a tooth extraction, and others too numerous to In the fullness of time the tom was joined by a wee lady who began her residence with a course of injections. She began to know the vet better through pills

for her genera! condition, and a hysterectomy after her first litter. Under anaesthetic she had tartar scraped from her teeth, and eventually she had her claws clipped. All these visits meant payment of bills, on which an unsympathetic government allowed no deduction for social security. The day came when the old tom, very shaky and far gone, had to be put down. The vet put him to sleep by injection in the surgery, and the family took him home and buried him in the garden. After many weeks there was still no bill for this visit. They asked the vet, and he simply said he was not sending a bill. If they had ever needed evidence about the goodness of human nature, this was the evidence.