Zubby and Enid got into a throw down on the weekend and Eeney came out the loser, with a big scratch under her eye.

We waited for a day to see if it would heal itself, but when it seemed plain that it wouldn't, we made a vet appointment for her Monday night.

Our vet's husband takes over secretarial duties for her at night, and since the spousal unit and I have practically lived there for the last few weeks, he remembered us. There was much joking about charging us rent and whether or not we should just get the spousal unit's paycheque direct deposited to our vet.

Much as I like the guy, I would much prefer he only see us once a year for cat shots and that we just be the anonymous middle-aged couple with insanely healthy cats. I live for that day.

That said, I adore our vet. Her affection for cats is quite plain and she handles them extremely well. She took Eeney through an eye test involving drops and a special light so competently that the cat barely had time to complain. The test showed no damage to the eye, which is a big whew, but the scratch itself is infected.

So now we're back on antibiotics with another cat. The vet effortlessly fed Eeney her first pill. The spousal unit and I made the mistake of cockily announcing that we, too, have developed mad pill feeding skillz.

We were so foolish and na�ve.

Miss Vera lulled the spousal unit and me into this fool's paradise. We certainly had to feed a lot of pills to that cat during her short stay with us, and we never once had a problem doing it.

We were so foolish and na�ve.

We should have harkened back to my late lamented cat, Zoe, who was the Queen of the kingdom of You Will Never, Ever Feed Me a Pilldom. Seriously, the cat weighed almost nothing, but to get a pill into her I'd have to wrap her in a towel to protect myself from her claws and wriggling, and the spousal unit would have to pry open her jaws and toss the pill in.

Except.

Except the darn cat would NEVER swallow a pill the first time around. Seriously. We even used the old toss the pill in and stroke the cat's throat to make it swallow trick and the cat would STILL not swallow the pill. She'd sit there all still, con us into believing the pill was well on the way to digestion, and then when we'd release her she'd spit it out.

With attitude.

The cat never spit the pill out of the front of her mouth. No, she'd always spit it out of the side of her mouth.

Trust me, that's much, much more sarcastic.

Then we (and by "we" I mean the spousal unit) would have to pick up a soggy, kinda sticky cat spit laden pill and toss it in again. Sometimes it would take three goes to get one pill in.

Good times.

Well, Eeney has decided to carry on Zoe's proud tradition. The thing with Eeney is that she is over ten pounds and she is extremely strong.

It is an understatement to say it is not going well. Trying to give this cat a pill is not unlike trying to toss a pill down the throat of a white, black and orange Tasmanian Devil. She has to have a pill morning and evening and so far it has taken us at least three tries each time to get the pill down. This morning it took five tries. We have almost two weeks of this ahead of us.

This is sapping my will to live.

--Marn

Mileage on the Marnometer: 228.27 miles. Duckage. My joy knows no bounds.