One thing I have to say about my monster is that he is totally unfazed by the carrier. And the camera. After I lured him over to it to get an action shot of my cat doing something properly, he looked up at me and yawned.
And then he turned and walked right into it:
If that picture isn't hilarious, I don't know what is. It just doesn't look like it's possible that he'd end up in the carrier. But it is. And he even managed to turn around once he got in there (not until after the effort knocked the whole thing over on its side and I righted it).
So, then I lifted that damned thing and carried to the car. Except for the part where it has wheels. Really, I just attached a leash to it and dragged him along behind me, stopping occasionally to change our direction.
We made it to the vet, a mere fifteen minutes late, which for me coming straight from work is not a bad showing. The cat looked a bit more comfortable by the time we got there and I heaved his dead weight onto the table.
He was so comfortable and stuffed in there that we didn't even try to shake him out. Instead we just took the carrier apart and then he sat in it until I finally picked him up and stuck him on the scale. I don't have any pictures of this because I didn't want to take pictures of my cat at the vet in front of anyone. That would be weird. Putting them on the internet is totally normal.
He didn't try to kill anyone! He didn't make any threatening noises! We saw a new vet, and she was just wonderful. She encouraged me to do all of the cat wrangling and the whole thing was just so utterly painless. I love the new doctor at the animal hospital and will be requesting her from now on.
This doesn't mean that my cat wanted anything to do with me. I took this one while the vet was off getting me information about cat weight loss.
(The softclaws came in handy. I would have been bleeding profusely without them, because he did attempt to really dig in to my arms as I held him. I think his plan was to climb me. This counts as good behaviour because he did not scream and he did not lunge at anyone's face and I don't have any puncture wounds. It's all relative.)
He weighs... 23 pounds and 14 ounces. Last January, he weighed 16 pounds. I now have over ten kilos of cat.
I carried him out to the car after the exam, but the wheels on the carrier did not appear to be functioning anymore. I think his fat ass broke them. I was not about to take almost 24 pounds of deadweight on a plastic handle to the fourth floor.
I had to take the lid back off of the carrier to get him out of it in the car. So, when we got home I attempted to carry my purse, soft drink, weight loss info and vet paperwork, and the actual oversized cat to my apartment.
To review, and because I don't have any good pictures of this leg of the journey, this is what I look like carrying my cat:
So, clearly, I need two hands for that. Fortunately, he was freaked out and clinging to me pretty tightly. By the time we got off of the elevator, I was extra grateful for the vinyl fingernails; they saved my shoulders. It turns out that the cat does not find elevators pleasing.
This is when I set down the cat. And he wandered off in the wrong direction. I thought for sure, freaked out as he was, that he would do what he does when he's not freaked out and follow me like an obedient puppy.
I was mistaken. I had no hope of scooping him back up with the purse, soft drink and paperwork. So, I ran into the apartment, muttered something to Steady about the cat being in the hallway, dropped my stuff and ran back out. Isis was confused; he'd decided he lived in a different apartment and was standing with his front paws on that door screaming his head off to be let in.
I can only hope no one was home.
Finally, I scooped the cat back up (at this point, my arms were tired) and we made it inside where I explained to Steady that the cat has been put on a fairly strict no-carb diet. Really. That's the plan. It involves only wet food, so I think the monster will enjoy it.
He's so over that whole carrier thing:
(That last one was taken later in the evening after I'd gone down to the car to get the carrier and the camera.)
