Chris Pascoe’s Fun Tales

Chris ponders the problem of so many daft pets… so many vet bills…

Our tortoiseshell cat Jojo had some teeth out last week and seemed fine, but she’s been poking her tongue out at me repeatedly for the past two hours. She’s either got it in for me today or something’s gone wrong.

Something “going wrong” won’t be a surprise in all truth. It’s been one of those weeks when everything seems to go wrong at once. We’ve got two cars but neither of them work, the washing machine prefers to make strange gurgling sounds rather than wash clothes, and every pet in the house – bar Billie the rabbit and Bob the fish – has had a trip to the vets.

Firstly, Bodmin, our giant black ex-stray cat, decided to start pulling all his own fur out. While relieved that he had finally turned his attention on himself rather than the local dogs, off he went to the vets because there was obviously some underlying cause for this. There was; he’s unhinged. OK, the vet didn’t say that in quite so many words, but the inference was definitely there in the “calming pills” he was given.

Meanwhile, our deathdefying strange little cat Spooky broke her leg – again – mainly through her refusal to accept that next door’s roof can’t be reached from our roof in one giant leap.

Ted, star of the World’s DaftestRabbit book, lived up to his name by getting a blade of grass stuck up his nostril. So thoroughly did he manage to do this, they had to knock him out with anaesthetic to remove it.

Not wanting to miss out on the action, our other fish, Flash Gordon, suddenly decided he no longer wanted to swim in an upright position and started paddling along upside down.

He didn’t have to actually attend the vets, but we did need to ask them about him, and if you even say hello to a vet they’ll charge you.

They diagnosed a swim bladder problem, prescribed some special fluid for the fish tank and suggested we pull him backwards through the water. He didn’t like this at all, but it did seem to rectify the problem.

Bob seemed to quite enjoy watching all this, probably pointing a fin and laughing at Gordon’s rapidly receding furious face.

So anyway, with vet bills already climbing high, Jojo the haughty tortie began repeatedly punching herself in the face.

At first we thought she must be taking a leaf out of Bodmin’s book and picking fights with herself, but Jojo isn’t really the fighting type. She once got slapped on the nose by a mouse and legged it. So, having braved her tortie wrath by raising her chin and peering in her mouth, we realised she must be having problems with her teeth. After hugely expensive X-rays and tests, out came three teeth.

Not content with that, we now have the aforementioned tongue poking thing going on, so it’s back to the vets this afternoon.

I don’t know why they don’t just hold me upside down and shake me in case there’s any loose change left in my pockets…

She got slapped on the nose by a mouse and legged it

Chris Pascoe is the author of A Cat Called Birmingham and You Can Take the Cat Out of Slough, and of Your Cat magazine’s column Confessions of a Cat Sitter.