This might have been the perfect job for me. I looked after cats in the cattery and prepared pets and their anxious owners for repair. Of course I didn't mind cleaning up cat poo and bird poo and doing all those things only a crazy cat lady could do. Play with yarn, roll around in catnip, talk in cat language etc. After all, Catwoman was my supposed alter ego. I had nine lives, and spent most of them on the catwalk, treading the fine balance of navigating the pitfalls, barking dogs, and humans who just didn't understand cats.
You had horse whisperers and baby whisperers, I was the cat meower. I had about five cats in my charge and one cat that had 17 kittens (it was the neighbours, they took no responsibility for any of her pregnancies) but we loved her so much that we were willing to rescue her from the SPCA and give her a good, even better life chez the Chan family. We had chinese food of course, what cat doesn't like mum's cooking.
My vet nurse description wasn't much it was basically caring for animals. However at the Swanson Vet it wasn't just cats, though they operated a cattery, but all other pets, including dogs and mice. Unfortunately for me, dogs and cats generally do not like each other. And in the operating theatre, I had to witness dogs getting their balls chopped off and mice being euthanised. I was stoic though and this of course came with the job. I would hold their paws while the deed was being done.
The price people paid for their pets was pretty steep, though I suspect children cost a whole lot more. The only thing that undid me was the medical smell, of dried blood and disinfectant and iodine, that in an enclosed space made me feel very dizzy and faint, so I didn't last very long in that job and had to quit.
I do wonder sometimes what turn my life would have taken had I had a stronger constitution and stuck with what was the animal division of Shortland Street. When Socks was nearing the end of his life mum made an appointment with the Vet, but he knew what was coming and snuck away. So we never did find Socks though sometimes his ghost comes to visit me at odd times (usually at night) waking me up but I just open the window and say go to the flowers where he's supposed to be sleeping.
Every hospital needs a cat though and Waitakere has one called Daisy. Though we didn't see her there last time mum got drained of blood. I now avoid hospitals whenever I can because of all the traumatic memories, long buried, of nearly losing my life in one. Though I sometimes think they could do with better books instead of Women's Weekly magazines in their waiting rooms, circa 2002, though it is entertaining to read the latest gossip out loud to patients who really really want to know just what the Royal Family are up to.
Mum was very disappointed I did not become a nurse like the heroines on Shortland Street that she watches every night at 7pm. I remind her she already has one son who is a surgeon, she doesn't really need me in the medical profession. Don't I have enough drama in my life already? If the DHB had proper libraries for patients in hospitals and I could just go round reading bedtime stories and singing lullabies to distressed patients I could possibly do that, but whoever heard of such a thing in New Zealand?
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