The Beauty in Time

46

◿𝙼𝚊𝚝𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚠◸

I've never really liked cats. They're kind of dicks. They scratch up your furniture, scream when they see a sliver of the bottom of their food bowl, and they shit in boxes that are hard to hide in little apartments.

But I have a cat now. Whether I like it or not, I have one. And this cat needs checkups. Annual checkups. I should probably get my dog his annual checkups too, but he's an ass who hates the car and hates the vet even more.

Dizzy hates the car and the vet too. So much so that she gets me pretty good a few times while I try carefully getting her in her crate. Elle got called into work, so she left me in charge of this.

Dizzy hasn't mellowed out by the time we get to the vet. She's growling and hissing in her crate, and I get a few concerned glances from other people with their sick pets either sitting in their laps, in their own crates, or at their feet.

I don't even know what I'm doing when we get into the back room where the veterinarian asks me questions about Dizzy. I have a handful of printed out papers stapled together that Elle gave me, some instructions and some things she wanted to ask the vet about.

The vet clearly has never seen a clueless person come in with their partner's pet, because she's very confused with my list. Especially when she asks me something and it takes me three to five minutes to find the answer while Dizzy throws herself around her crate. I'm afraid to let her out.

"Sorry," I shake my head with a deep sigh as I squint at the third page where I'm pretty sure the information from Dizzy's last checkup is. I could've sworn I just saw it. "The cat—She's, uh, my girlfriend's. I mean—I guess she's mine too now, but I don't know a lot about her. She's a good cat, and I like her, but I don't know how much weight she's lost since she's been here last."

I rant some while I struggle to find Dizzy's last weight number. The vet takes it upon herself to pick Dizzy's crate up while I search, bringing her to a titanium table where she sets the crate down and opens the little door. Dizzy hurries out, but she's caught before she can jump down and run around the little room.

"That's okay, take your time." The vet smiles sweetly as she lifts Dizzy onto what looks like a scale. Poor Dizzy loses her fucking mind for a few seconds.

"Oh—Here we go." I grin once I find what looks like her last weigh in info. "Uh, ten pounds." I declare, squinting.

"Oh." The vet blinks at me then at the scale. She lets Dizzy go, and she jumps down immediately to start roaming about the room. "Um...okay. Is she on any kind of diet?"

I grimace as I look down at my booklet. "I don't...think so." I mutter awkwardly. Definitely not. She eats Cujo's food if he doesn't get to it fast enough.

"Okay. So, she's about sixteen pounds now." The vet nods confidently at that number, and I slowly look down at Dizzy.

Is that bad? It sounds bad. Dizzy looks happy. I mean, she still makes the jump between Elle's balcony and mine—though Elle recently put up this mesh screen thing so she hasn't jumped over in a while. But I mean, she runs. And jumps. She's fine.

I end up scrambling for my pen in my front pocket to basically scribble down everything the vet says after that. I absorb nothing she says, but I write it all down for Elle anyway. Elle will probably know what to do with it.

By the time it's over, Dizzy's pissed and she won't go back into her crate. She hates it. The vet...she's not helpful with this part. She giggles as she tells Dizzy she's quite stubborn before she tells me she'll meet me in the front. Then she sort of just leaves.