Me Against the World

First, I want to thank everyone who gave me brain-soothers from around the Internet. I especially want to thank the woman who suggested it’s also relaxing to, you know, actually step away from the computer and go outside for a walk. I was going to figure out how to post a page of calming-links and rotate them out every few days but having spent several days in the land of calming, I was due for a couple days of weird. For my more excitable readers who are about to start worrying remember, I didn’t say bad and I didn't say sad. I said weird.

A while back, someone who comments here had a blog about how unbearably disgusting he found cats; and more specifically, the cats of his roommates. Apparently, there was a certain laissez-faire attitude towards litter-box usage and only the litter-box and their food was everywhere. Even though I love cats, I certainly understood his revulsion, although I can make the argument that the cats weren’t the slobs here, it was the ones with the thumbs who owned them and didn’t clean enough. But part of me wanted to say, “Hey, blogger. Blame not the species; in fact, come to my house and see how clean, neat and low-key a properly-tended housecat can be.”

Then again, Lulabelle was peeing in the tub and shower, so maybe she wasn’t up to being the standard-bearer for her people. After two days of shouting at her and curling my lip in dismay, I noted the urine had some blood in it; she had a bladder infection. I suddenly recalled my mother telling me that the cat we had growing up would pee in the tub when she had a bladder infection. Whatever benefit tub-peeing provides the cat, it allows to human to note the problem, which might go unnoted in a regular litter box, eventually leading to serious problems. It’s weird, it’s not what you want to find first thing in the morning when you just want to take a shower without having to reach for the Chlorox, but no one can deny that it isn’t effective. I whisked her in to the vet and got her antibiotics. Ten days later, she was fine.


Three weeks later, I was scrubbing the tub again; another trip to the vet, another round of antibiotics. This time, the vet massaged her abdomen in a seriously intrusive way, to see if he could feel kidney stones. “No kidney stones, just a really bad bladder infection,” he declared. Having had bladder infections and wincing in empathy at what it must have felt like to have the doctor Rolf her torso, I silently thanked the cat for not killing him.

Two more months passed. Early this week, I found Lulabelle shimmering out of the bathroom, a place that by its very excess of water isn’t usually her favorite hangout. Sure enough, the Mad Urinator had struck again. Back to the vet we went, who was now puzzled. Cats can have a predisposition towards bladder infections, but it usually shows up in adolescence or as a consequence of old age. Lulabelle is in the prime of life. We decided to get her x-rayed to rule out a tiny yet vicious kidney stone. A few minute later, the tech brought her back in and set up a laptop computer with the x-ray image on it. I placed the cat back in her carrier and stared deeply at the x-ray. I always stare at test results in doctor’s offices, which is adorable because I have never understood a single thing I was looking at. But, darn it, it’s there and I’m going to participate. I proudly noted that I recognized vertebrae and a tail, which is two more things than I can usually find. Peering at the picture for a while, I was interested to note that there was something white and opaque in her upper abdomen, bone-like but nowhere near another bone. After all these years of peering fruitlessly at medical tests, I had every reason to believe I finally diagnosed something; I had found Lulabelle’s kidney stone.

The vet came in, and leaned over the laptop, looking at the x-ray. A minute passed and then another. I got a little impatient; couldn’t he see what I had come to think of as our kidney stone? I was about to say something I hoped would sound medical when he said thoughtfully, “Well, she doesn’t have kidney stones, but did you know she’s been shot?”

She’s…I…but…huh?

He pointed to my kidney stone and said, “That’s a bullet.”

I’ll summarize the next few minutes of my asking questions and spluttering for you. Lulabelle, at some point in the past, was shot with a very small-caliber weapon, probably from the back. It entered her backside and lodged in her pelvis, miraculously missing both her spine and her excretory organs. Oddly enough, her bladder infection was completely unrelated; had we not taken the x-ray, we’d never have known about this. Contrary to what I immediately assumed, my missing a gunshot wound on my cat didn’t make me the worst pet-owner in the world. The bullet was small enough so that the entry wound had been small and probably stopped bleeding very quickly. In the years we have owned her, she’s spent more than one night out exactly twice; it could have been during one of those times and by the time she got home she had stopped bleeding and her fur covered the scab. Or it could have been from before we owned her. If she knew, she wasn’t telling. The vet saw no reason for the moment to remove the bullet. He gave me a stronger antibiotic for the bladder infection and sent us home.

I drove home in silence for a few minutes and then called Consort to tell him the news. We both agreed that she was insanely lucky and that we were very grateful she was so very lucky and then I swung around to the thought which had been lurking at the back of my head for several minutes.

“Our cat who takes pride in her killing skills got shot and walked around with a bullet in her, possibly for years. Should we change her name to Biggie Smalls? Tupac?”

Consort offered, “Lupac?”

So, as with so many of her brothers-in-arms in the rap community, my cat now has her given name and her hood-name. May I present Lupac Shapurr.

Of course, Biggie and Tupac eventually got caught in another hail of bullets and their luck ran out. Lulabelle isn’t going to be given that chance. Even though her raison d’etre comes from being an indoor-outdoor cat, I had never been happy about that lifestyle. Now, she shall remain inside. It won’t be as interesting, but I’ll get new toys, she can slap the dog and, if she wants, I’ll build her a recording studio.