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Sally and Noah go to the vet
Tuesday, October 23 2001
Sally the dog and Noah the big fluffy grey cat were due for shots, so today we took them to their veterinarian. Since these critters are partly the responsibility of Barbara, Gretchen's old girlfriend, and since Barbara works at the Humane Society at the Humane Society shelter on 59th Street, they get free veterinary care at the Manhattan Humane Society office. The only downside of this is that we have to somehow get them there. The method of choice for transporting pets is a car service, since many cabs refuse to carry dogs.
So there we were, zooming northward up the FDR to 59th Street with a yowling cat in a plastic cage and a bundle of tail-wagging earnestness in the back. Gretchen seemed to know a lot of the people at the Humane Society, including a woman who fetched me an essential cup of coffee in my hour of greatest need. Barbara was there, and I got to meet her. She seemed nice enough to me, and I couldn't even detect any regional Pittsburgh dialect in her conversation.
Much stronger was Bonnie's accent on the "cat floor" upstairs. Bonnie is a thin, middle-aged woman who runs the office of adoptions, and the language she speaks is unadulterated Brooklynese. While I stood around with an extremely-friendly dog-faced striped cat wrapped around my neck like a scarf, Bonnie had a frank discussion with Gretchen about why she doesn't feel comfortable ever getting married again. "I have terrible gas," she said, "and I'm just not comfortable farting around a guy." She then asked me for a guy's opinion, and I told her, "Well, I mean, I know that people are people and aren't made out of ether."
Later on, back down in the waiting room, Bonnie was beseeching Gretchen to find her a girlfriend. "I'm getting desperate here!" she exclaimed. But then, after learning my tolerant views of farts among women, started flirting with me too, saying to Gretchen things like, "He has beautiful eyes, this one." Then, when we were hoisting Sally up on the table in the operating room, Bonnie was looking at me provocatively around a corner with just one eye. She was totally out of control and it was hilarious. Just about everyone at the Humane Society seemed to be a lesbian or at least bisexual, except for the guy who came buy just to cremate his decease rat. Not only that, but some of them had huge repressed crushes on their co-workers. Who knew that the Manhattan Humane Society was such a lesbian soap opera.
Meanwhile Sally was good about giving a blood sample and getting her shots, but she began struggling when it came time to clip her nails. Worst of all was when we went to put that stuff up her nose. She hated that stuff and struggled madly to get away. It took three of us to hold her down. Still, Gretchen told me Sally was better than ever before, mostly, she said, because I was gently stroking Sally's face the whole time.
I didn't see Noah get his shots, though I heard that he took it with considerably less complaint than Sally. I was out in front with Sally, waiting for our homeward-bound car service.
Due to unexpected delays at the Humane Society, I got home a lot later than expected. Since I was supposed to be working all this time, I was a little concerned that my absence might be causing problems. Lucky for me, though, stuff doesn't get rolling in Santa Monica until about 1pm Eastern Time. But when it did get rolling, Jesus H. Christ, it came fast and furious. I'd almost forgotten about this one set of publishing tools I'd agreed to make, and when I heard we were supposed to get the product they support shipped "this week," I put my nose to the grindstone and cranked out the tools in the course of a few hours. I was helped enormously by the fact that the tool infrastructure I built is almost infinitely flexible. During this time, however, I could also feel myself growing steadily weaker as the worst phase of my cold passed through.
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