The trip was last minute–a family emergency that took us out of town unexpectedly this past August for a few days. David called our vet’s office to arrange boarding for Toes only to find that they no longer provided boarding. Because our original vet was no longer there. While we were away in Europe, he’d retired, sold the practice to someone else, and the entire staff had changed hands.

Now, if Toes didn’t have chronic kidney disease, the fact that the staff had turned over might not have even registered for me. But I’d been in the vet’s office every few weeks picking up fluids or kidney food. Toes boarded with them whenever David and I traveled together. I knew the staff well and couldn’t believe they were all just gone.

We hurried to find another place for Toes to board and luckily were able to. Dropping her off, I was filled with this sense of sadness about the vet techs and office staff Toes and I would never see again. Instead, I handed her off to strangers.

A few weeks later I would take her to meet the new vet that took over the practice. Luckily, I really like the new vet. So much so that I might even follow their sign’s suggestion and Like their new Facebook page.

In November 2016, about a month after we formally adopted her, Toes was diagnosed with chronic kidney disease. David was out of town when we received the news (as he’d been during the bite incident). Therefore, I was alone in the vet’s office when the doctor advised me on the treatment–a special kidney diet and subcutaneous fluids administered every other day.

Before Toes was diagnosed, I’d never heard of subcutaneous fluids, but apparently it’s a treatment commonly prescribed for older cats. It involves sticking a needle in your cat’s back and letting fluids flow from an IV bag into the cat.

When the doctor told me I would need to do this, I couldn’t believe it was something I was capable of. I’m not a vet tech! Plus, Toes was a bite-y cat, and even though she’d been cleared in the rabies quarantine, I was still scared of her.

The first few days she needed fluids, while David was still out of town, I took her up to the vet’s office to have the staff perform the treatment. After David returned, we learned how to do the task together–with me holding Toes in position and singing to her while David did the needle-y stuff.

Eventually I learned how to do the fluids by myself because David travels a lot. And it isn’t practical to take a cat to the vet that often.

Recently, when David was out of town (surprise!), I was having some trouble with the fluids. I couldn’t get them to flow out of the bag. I called my medically oriented family members for help, I called the vet’s office, and eventually realized that a clip on the IV line designed to block the flow had been activated.

For close to two years, I’d been giving Toes fluids, and while I’d seen the clip on the line, I’d never truly comprehended its functionality before then.

The big questions and mysteries of life overwhelm me, but I usually feel like I understand the small stuff. However, my failure to recognize the utility of the clip made me wonder. What other small things have I not figured out yet? 

When we met her, Toes was a neighborhood stray cat. We started feeding her, and she quickly became a fixture of our back deck, begging to be invited inside the house. We couldn’t do that because I’m allergic to cats, but we spent time outside with her every night, feeding her, petting her, and calling her Toes like she was our pet.

A week or two into our new relationship with Toes, I was on the deck alone with her one night. David was out of town. She was sitting next to me on an outdoor couch while I studied lines for a sketch show that was opening the next day.

I was petting Toes absentmindedly while I shuffled around scripts when it happened. Toes ever so lightly bit at my hand to get my attention. While it didn’t feel like she’d pierced the skin, there was a mark there, and I wasn’t entirely sure she hadn’t.

Panic took hold as I realized that I didn’t really know Toes that well. She was a stranger to me, and she could have RABIES. (I have a deep seeded fear of rabies due to repeated warnings I received on camping trips as a child that if a raccoon bit me I would need to get twenty-one shots in the stomach.)

When Toes grazed me with her teeth, it was late at night. I went in and washed my hand. I tried to calm myself down and go to bed, but I slept in fits and rose early the next morning still mired in fear. The fear eventually led me to the ER (it was a Saturday) where I showed them the most minuscule of possible puncture wounds.

Nobody was taking any chances so the doctor there urged me to have Toes put under quarantine to observe her for signs of rabies. I went from the hospital to the DeKalb County Animal Services where I explained the situation to them through MANY tears. They dispatched a couple of animal patrol officers to pick Toes up from our back deck and take her into quarantine.

One of these officers called me within the hour, “we got her.”

There were a couple aspects of this experience that were particularly trying. First, it was embarrassing crying in front of ER doctors, animal control officers, and my friends later that evening when I finally got to my sketch show. Second, because I have such an overwhelming fear of rabies, I didn’t feel like I could make a rational decision about how to address the biting. Luckily there was a system in place to help me, and I found comfort in that.

So remember, whatever you’re going through, someone else has likely gone through it before you, and it’s possible there’s already a protocol you can follow. 

Toes primarily stays inside, but about once or twice a day we let her out into the back yard where she likes to bask in the sun and walk around a bit. She never goes very far, and her old age keeps her from hopping the fence.

Last week I let her out to roam while I took the trash and recycling cans from the side of the house to the curb. I had the side gate open, and when I returned to the side of the house, I found Toes at the gate looking toward the front yard.

My first instinct was to swing the gate closed so she couldn’t escape, but she walked past it before I got to her. The gate breached, I let her walk forward a little further, staying close by so I could snatch her up just in case. (She’s a very slow moving cat.)

She walked to the end of the house where she had a full view of the front yard. She considered it for a moment. I thought I might have to grab her, but then she turned around and walked back into the back yard of her own volition. My heart flooded with relief–Toes does want to be our pet!

She just needed to see what else was out there. 

I remember the first extended conversation I had with Toes. David was out of town, and I’d gone to see the movie The Lobster with a couple of friends. After the movie, I came home to an empty house and sat out on my back deck drinking wine. Toes surprised me by jumping up on the fence alongside the deck and greeting me with a series of meows.

If you’ve seen The Lobster, you know it’s a dark twisted comedy that involves humans being turned into animals. As Toes, a strange neighborhood cat at this point, meowed at me, I couldn’t help but draw a parallel to the movie and wonder if she was secretly a human asking for help. I freaked out and went inside.

Weeks later, David and I were sitting on the back deck at night drinking wine when we heard Toes meow at us from across the yard.

“Maybe we should give her some milk,” I said to David as she approached.

We did, and the next day I went out and bought cat food for her. In turn, Toes became a fixture on our deck, staring into our back door with wide golden eyes and meowing so insistently that at times it felt like I was in a horror movie–being stalked by a cat who couldn’t be fed enough.

On the surface, David and I were unlikely candidates for pet ownership. I’m allergic to cats and both of us dislike responsibility except for things we’re truly passionate about. But Toes insisted on being our pet.

I wrote last week about the challenges of saying No, and I want to follow up on that today by acknowledging the difficulty of hearing No. It can be hard to ask for what we want because we open up ourself to the possibility of rejection and rejection hurts.

Toes didn’t have a whole lot of options–she was a hungry, seemingly abandoned domestic cat. Her insistence was driven from biological need.

Our pursuits might be less biologically driven, but there’s still something we can learn from Toes desperation. In pursuing your dreams, you’re likely going to need help from others. You have to open yourself up to the possibility of rejection and be willing ask for help despite this risk.