This Grizzly Reality

14^th March 2015

Dear Cassi,

       

I have so much to say about my wounded little cat. Well, writing about my pain dulls it some and gives me the strength to face this grizzly reality. When I gave Ire her medication that first time Pickle started crying. He’s thirty nine and crying over a wounded cat that isn’t his. Well, the liquid painkillers helped.

       

In any case, when I took my little silver gray cat to the eye specialist they quoted me for two separate operations. To simply remove the eye was almost three thousand dollars and to repair it, which would likely not save Ire’s sight, was nearly four thousand. Treating the condition medically would only cost six hundred.  I read later that she had quoted someone else twelve and eighteen hundred for these operations.

       

Now, as I mentioned, the specialist’s tools looked very old, and I told her so during the examination. She ignored me. It left a silence in the air that made me question if those tools were still modern. Further, there were old dusty books in the examination room and other objects that would have been hard to keep clean. A bit of dust in a damaged eye can make all the difference.

       

One thing that I did care for was that the vet wrapped my cat in a towel before conducting the examination. This kept her legs firmly secured so that she couldn’t scratch. It was a green towel, which I didn’t care for. White towels are kept for medical use so that they can be kept clean. It’s hard to miss dirt on a white towel.

       

The final point was that the vet didn’t bother to discuss the medications with me before I left. She said they were just strait forward. I didn’t know that there was a medication that needed refrigeration until I had slept and woke up again. I need to find a better eye doctor.

Know the world, little sister,

Richard Leland Neal

The Eye Doctor

13^th March 2015

Dear Cassi,

Yesterday I went to the veterinarian, and today I went back to the veterinarian. I told you that my troubles were not yet over and they had only started. Ire, my little silver gray kitten, was bleeding from her eye, and I knew the morpheme would only last so long.

       

I was the eye doctor’s first client of the day, and still they had me wait before being seen. At this point it was past eleven. It could have been that they had simply started a new sign in sheet, but there were no other clients waiting.

       

They sent me into an exam room and had me sit waiting again. I set Ire in my lap and stroked her back as she purred. I looked around that room noting that all the equipment looked old and the Hooker Green paint on one of the test tools made me think 60s or 70s. It was a hundred and thirty dollars just for the doctor to look at my cat with her eyes. She didn’t take a temperature, but she did shine a light at my cat in the dark.

       

She billed me for a pressure test and she billed me for a dye test. When she took the pressure test she used the same cap for both eyes then threw the little white bit of latex away afterwards. I think she should have changed caps. If Ire had an infection in one eye it just got transferred to the other.

       

It was more than five hundred dollars to walk out of that office, and if I’m late for the next appointment I’ll pay ninety but there’s more. The pain medication they gave my cat was in pill form. There was no way I could wrestle with her to take a pill with her eye swollen and bloody. What if I had hit the eye and damaged it somehow? I had to call my regular vet to see if I could get a liquid pain killer and they obliged.

       

I read up on that eye specialist and she has gotten bad review after bad review. This is kind of to be expected with a veterinarian. I mean, no one likes to pay big bills. The only thing is that when I read one of the reviews she had quoted someone else much less for the same operation.

Do your homework, little sister,

Richard Leland Neal