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| The Flehmen Reaction 4-27-2003 |
Next, she went with me to Indianapolis. I visited the
Guitar Center and purchased some necessities while she hung out in the car.
This trip was about an hour and a half each way. This was long enough to give
me an idea what Amethyst was like on the long haul. She stayed in my lap for
short periods. She worked her way back into the back of the hatchback. She used
her litter box while en route without complaint or difficulty. Likewise, she
ate and drank. It was difficult to keep a bowl full of water from spilling in a
moving vehicle, but there was always some water that stayed in the bowl. My
general impression was that of a restless, wakeful animal, not in distress, but
not able to relax either. She worked in a circle around the interior of the
car, exactly as she worked in any other interior human space she inhabited. She
just did it all much more rapidly. The pace of her routine, then, was
proportionate to the size of the enclosure. I did the driving in a very focused
way. I had in the back of my mind the fate of David Crosby’s ‘Guinevere’, who
lost control of the vehicle and died while trying to take her kitties to the vet.
At no time did Amethyst threaten to get underfoot, get her appendages caught up
in the steering wheel, or lacerate me to the point of distraction.
By now, it was late November. I took her to the vet.
Between this visit and the last, Leroy Nietzel had retired. In his stead,
Amethyst saw a younger man who was perfectly competent. He looked her over,
updated her vaccinations, and sent us home with a bottle of a half dozen
tablets of a cat-sized dose of Diazepam (5mg). I had done the previous car
rides without a pet carrier. Now I purchased one and read the instructions. As
per, I put Ammy’s food dishes in the carrier and left the door open. She went
in and ate. Next, after a few days of this, I tried closing her in. She was
good for about two minutes, and then she got a paw in the grate of the door and
gave it a shake. I noticed her looking up at the upper grate, anxiously. I am
not anthropomorphizing. There is no mistaking the look of anxiety in the eyes
and face of a cat. With meezers, the expression is amplified by the blue of the
irises. I took care not to leave Amethyst in the cage significantly beyond her
comfort zone. Little by little, I increased her time. She tolerated it, but she
was now resistant to getting in the cage on a volunteer basis.
The next step was to try the meds. I had the temporary
assignment over the Thanksgiving break of watching the cat of a graduate
student who had gone home to her family. I hatched a plan to dose Amethyst, put
her in the carrier, and take her with me on my rounds to visit with and feed
Dixie. I figured Amethyst had grown up with other dogs and cats. Besides, she’d
be out of it, in her carrier. In the end, this scheme resulted in a situation
that was, as they say, an, ahem, ‘learning experience’. There were too many
variables for good science. The first thing I did (wrong) was to half the dose.
I slipped a cut Diazepam tablet into a spoonful of Savory Salmon. Ammy scarfed
it down. After about five minutes, Amethyst was unsteady on her legs. In
another minute or two, she was face down on the floor, legs splayed out to the
sides. She was not, however, out cold. She was wide-awake. She had the
munchies. She worked her way to her bowls, using her limbs in whatever way she
could to get there. She could not really get up, so she spilled the water and
ended up face down in the rest of the Savory Salmon. She had to be rescued from
this position. She was busy trying to lick the Salmon off her face. In
retrospect, this condition of her physical body did not seem to distress her.
She did not call or make any noise about it. This was true of Amethyst to the
end of her life. She bore whatever her body dished out in silence, with grace.
The only time she would vocalize about feeling bad was when she was about to
vomit, and she would only do this on occasions of extreme nausea. Ordinary
nausea she bore with the same stoic silence. From this, I knew that she was at
least capable of expressing pain, that she was not really being stoic. It was,
in fact, actual pain that elicited a response. Mere disorientation or
discomfort did not, in her behavioral makeup, deserve a display. I, however,
was distressed on her behalf. I was now stuck. I did not want to give her more
Diazepam and put her out the rest of the way. I was not sure that I could get a
pill down her throat the hard way, and I certainly couldn’t do it the way I’d
done it before. Her attempt to satisfy her munchies while drunk was still in
evidence in her whiskers. Oh well. I put her in the carrier. She was at least
perfectly happy to be let down into it this time. Out the door, down the steps,
out to the car, and over to Dixie’s we went. It was a very short trip of only
two miles. Dixie was happy to see us. Amethyst, in her carrier, was not happy
to see Dixie. Amethyst, now on alert and standing up in the carrier, had her
back arched and was hissing a blue streak. I took the carrier into a closed
bedroom. I opened the door to the carrier, and out she staggered. She was at
least up on her feet! She went straight to a mirror where she arched her back
and hissed at her own image. I left her to it while I went to feed Dixie. When
I got back to the bedroom, Amethyst was under the bed, looking out at me,
sitting down on her haunches, all paws tucked under, in meat loaf position. It
was back in the carrier and back home with her. By the time we got home, she
was recovered enough to eat the rest of the Salmon. She got over her big
adventure as quickly as she had embarked on it. I never gave her any more
Diazepam.
