The Shot Clinic

I just got back from the SPCA rabies shot clinic down on Banks Avenue, and I really, really need a long stiff drink, but I'm just going to have coffee and hope the tremors slow down and that soon I'll be able to grasp a cigarette in my trembling fingers. I wonder if it's true that animals reflect the personalities of their owners, because if it is I'm sorry, everyone. Mr. Bill, despite the fact that he is now almost 2 and has lived here since he was about 7 weeks old, where noone has ever been even slightly mean to him, is terrified of all people except me. He will tolerate - barely - A and M, but he views all other humans with complete loathng and distrust. Theo, on the other hand, is far too fond of all people. It's other dogs he's not crazy about: with other dogs he has a touchy and perilous sense of honor. He's like one of those cartoon characters who's always ready to fight for his honor, or maybe he's like a redneck drunk in a biker bar: totally friendly unless he feels that he's been insulted in any way, at which point he turns into a psychopath. It's difficult to tell what constitutes an insult in Theo's eyes, which makes any outing with him a little chancy.

My fingers are all bandaged, because before we could even leave for the clinic M & I had to get Mr. Bill into a cat carrier. He was asleep on my pillow and I thought maybe we could just slip him into the carrier. He's much stronger than I thought - really terrible strength that cat has in his back legs, I must say, not to mention the claws. The first and naive attempt was thus a failure, and he fled into the living room, under the record player. I dragged him out of there by the scruff of his neck and tried to put him into a Digimon pillowcase on the theory that that would make it easier to hold him. That didn't work worth a damn. Mr. Bill was having none of this pillowcase stuff. He rematerialized under my bed and Theo kindly licked my bleeding hands while M and I discussed possible strategies. We locked the door and moved the bed and most of the furniture in my room while Mr. Bill wailed at us menacingly, but we finally got him in his box - upside down and backwards. He ended up with the soft towel on top of him, but at that point this didn't worry me much.

The Buncombe County SPCA insulted the weather gods most terribly at some point in their past, because every shot clinic is held in the worst weather possible. Today, it was snowing. Cherry blossoms, white snow flakes on the back of a black dog - it was all very Japanese, except for the howling cats in their carriers and the owners trying to hold their dogs in check and the desolate apparently abandoned cinder block building where the clinic was being held. Sort of post apocalyptic haiku scenery:

Cherry blossoms and hypodermics
Snowflakes
Does your dog bite? Aaaaiiiieeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!

But all this would have been bearable if it hadn't been for the large burly family with the four killer dogs in the back of their beat up pickup. They delegated a son to stand in line while they held the dogs in the back of the truck, although other members of the family came back and forth to say things like, "I wish Mama had thought to bring a muzzle!" and "Hell, I cain't hold him much more." This isn't really what you need to hear when you're in line with about 15 dogs, several howling cats in boxes and your own dog, who is on the thin edge of hysteria anyway.

Then some lady's cat got away, because in their wisdom the SPCA had arranged things so that the cats had to go into a truck to get their shots: a truck with an open door. There was lamentation and wailing and long explanations of how the lost cat was an abused cat and would never return. I understand the lamentation, because if it had been Mr. Bill I probably would have shot the guy in the truck myself, but it was still unnerving. The people with the death dogs grinned and shifted their chaw from one cheek to another and said it was a damn good thing their dogs hadn't of got loose to kill that cat, y'hear, because them dogs is cat killers every one, and their teenage daughter bummed cigarettes from the people in line.

Finally, finally we got to enter the blessedly warm, if really grungy & creepy, green cinderblock building, where volunteers slowly and laboriously wrote down all our information, one painful letter at a time. The evil dog family held breathless discussions with the volunteers. M (thank GOD I was able to bribe M to come along and help me) took Mr. Bill to the cat truck and I took Theo into the dog shot room.

The volunteer behind me said "Just bring your dogs in here" to the evil dog family.
"NO." I said. "My dog will fight too." The nice people in front of me with the lovely basset hound moved away and I felt guilty. "I'm sorry." I said, "Really he's mostly friendly!" They moved away further. "But" I said desperately, trying to make Theo, who had decided that this would be a good time to get vocal, shut up, "if he gets growled or snapped at he goes nuts." The volunteer shrugged, and they brought the dogs in anyway. Fortunately the whole large family covered them with their bodies, so all I had to do was listen to them talk about how tough and mean their dogs were while I covered Theo - he didn't actually bite the vet, per se - and I got him back in the car in one piece, where M was waiting. The cat vaccination had gone fine and Mr. Bill, safe in the car, was announcing loudly that he would never, no never, speak to me again, and in fact he thought perhaps he would take a large shit on my bed when he got home.

It's a good thing that they took Cujo & his littermates to get vaccinated, I know. I just don't understand entirely why the vet guy couldn't go and give them their shots in the back of the truck, although, I do see his point, since I wouldn't get in the back of that truck myself for anything on earth. At least it's over for another year, or, in Theo's case, three years, and now I can stop worrying about Mr. Bill getting rabies and turning into a vampire demon cat from an old horror movie. Although he says he might do that anyway, just to spite me for his long ordeal.