Return to 1997 SUMMER Index
by Boswell
The other afternoon a prime time slot on the TV was taken up with an appeal to rehome a Gerbil called Harriet. The serious and compassion filled tones asking for someone to give Harriet the Gerbil a good home (because 'she deserves it') followed, and neatly juxtaposed, a news report by John Simpson describing the living conditions of the poorest amongst the world's poor. It struck me as simultaneously funny, horrifying and inspiring that on one side of the world people are suffering such hardships whilst in dear old England we are devoting such resources to re-homing a Gerbil (albeit a deserving one).
I have always had a great affinity with animals. I read Doctor Dolittle at an impressionable age and throughout my childhood would bring home one wounded creature after another. Most of them died and I wept buckets each time, the hot salty tears of a child's frustrated compassion and incomprehension at death. Animals do tend to seek me out, sensing that I like them or that I am a soft touch they will home in. Big dogs are the worst as they make a bee line for my crotch and stuff their nose in where it doesn't belong, although it must be said it fits. This natural gift, this Shamanistic 'way' with animals, has prompted me to change careers and consider work as a veterinary nurse. To this end I was invited to observe a practice in action to see how I liked it.
It was in the biting chill of midwinter that I went to a large small animal practice in north London (the practice is large, and animals small). Perhaps deliberately I was invited to observe the surgery end of things - to determine no doubt whether I would pass out or throw up at my first incision. Feeling a little nervous and really not at my best in the early morning the first operation to watch was the removal of an eyeball from a cat, this was billed as enucleation on the wipe clean board in the corridor. The cat was an old moggie and the eye looked like an opaque marble, the cataracts and what have you so dense that the pupil was entirely obscured. Thankfully the vet draped the cat in green sterile cloths so that only the eye section was showing and this made it hard for me to get a good view. What a mercy. The operation took an amazingly long time and throughout the cat's breathing became slower and slower. In the pauses between breaths the nurse and I watched for the next rise of the rib cage with the undivided attention of the paparazzi on a Princess.
After the operation the cat was put on the draining board-cum intensive care unit until it started to come around and was moved to one of the holding cages. After this everything else was much more routine. Several cats with bad teeth were booked in and the table was full of tabbies with tartar, gingers with gingivitis and moggies with cheesy molars. I was feeling pretty confident and really enjoying the day although it was a shame that the patients were all so anaesthetised that they did not realise that they were being stroked by someone who has such a way with animals.
A strange case presented half way through the day; a longhaired moggie whose owners appeared never to have groomed it. As the cat had aged and become stiff the business of keeping all this fur in order had become a bit too much of a chore and it had become matted. The mats had in turn become flea Hiltons, the poor cat was literally teeming with the nasty brown bloodsucking blighters. The owner had apparently asked if the cat needed a flea collar - not as much as the owner needed a brain, would have been my reply. The cat had to be anaesthetised and shaved all over since no amount of teasing with the combs was making any impression on the clots of felt that were once its coat. It looked a lot smaller and whiter once we had finished but was also in shock and sat looking very miserable and shivering. My own experiences at the hairdressers gave me a fellow feeling so I stayed with the scrawny cat or while and put it on a heat blanket; it looked like ET, all bald and skinny and hiding under a blanket. I only hope the bill will inspire the owners to comb it once in a while.
The (now) one-eyed cat had a haemorrhage, which looked like someone had stuck a piece of liver onto the side of its face. This is apparently not unusual as the anaesthetic wears off since it depresses the blood pressure and, as the cat comes round, the pressure rises rupturing the clots that may have formed. The pace of things started to slow down and I wandered around reading various posters about vaccinations and thank you cards from grateful dogs and cats. Then one of the things I had been dreading happened, a cat had to be put down. This was something I had considered for a long time and it is one of the reasons that I don't really have the desire to become a vet. I want to help mend animals, not to kill them. Its hopelessly irrational, not least of all because I am a supporter or euthanasia for people but this is just one of the many inconsistencies I have in my attitude to animals and I think I'm not alone in this.
The cat in question was a very beautiful Oriental shorthaired Siamese-type. There were no particular signs of the cat being in distress but the lab results had confirmed that the kidneys and just about every other major organ were packing it in. I gazed at the cat and at the vet about to administer the Pentabarbitone barbiturate, such a tiny quantity of liquid in a syringe. The cat seemed uninterested in everything, unaware of the fate the next 60 seconds would bring, it seemed to be resigned if anything. The radio chose this moment to gush into Celine Dion's rendition of 'All by Myself'; her emotive voice the unwitting soundtrack to a lethal injection. The vet was quick, the injection was given and the cat dead before the song was over, no fuss, no convulsions, no struggle....a gentle going into that good night. My throat closed up and my eyes welled but I managed to rationalise the death in a panic that someone might notice that I am not tough enough to deal with it.
The nurse attending then gently curled the cat up as though it was asleep by the fire and wrapped it in a blanket. The owner collected it from her.
That evening I lay in bed with my own cat, Kizzy, and thought about the day. I couldn't get the image of that cat out of my mind and as I thought about it all the sadness that I had rationalised returned and I wept. Kizzy's little white chin bumped into the bed head as she squirmed around me waiting for her usual night-time snack. I turned over to look at her and be reassured. She gazed back at me with her frogs' spawn eyes, furrowed brow and a large dribble waiting to drop on me from her low lip as she purred in anticipation of a biscuit.
I will toughen up but never I think enough not to be touched by the death of any creature. Perhaps I was a Jainist in a previous life...this is not the compassion of now. Life and death, how close and how far apart they are, like two points next to each other on a circle.
© Boswell 1997