Subject: A Trip to the Veterinary Clinic

(Breakfast of Champions)

My day started with an early morning trip to the veterinary clinic with our cat, Arlo. He’s an indoor cat, but slipped out the door sometime late Saturday night or Sunday morning. We don’t know whether he was out all night or only for twenty minutes or so with the dogs. What we do know is that when I let the dogs back in after their first romp of the day on Sunday, Arlo, aka “the little grey dog,” was waiting at the back door with them. He was acting perfectly normal on Sunday, but yesterday didn’t eat all day. He spent the day sleeping on top of some Christmas wreaths stacked under the stairs in our furnace room – very unusual behaviour for him. Then, as I was running my hand over his head and scratching his ears, I felt a lump and something sticky in the fur on his forehead. We really couldn’t see anything, but it was definitely a concern, especially since he’s about fifteen years old and had surgery a year ago to remove a mast cell tumour.

Our vet was able to see him today if I could drop him off there first thing in the morning. So off I went this morning with my breakfast smoothie in one cup holder and a kitty urine sample in the other.

I’m now waiting for a phone call from the vet. BTW, the little bugger was rolling around on our bed looking perfectly fine just before we left for the clinic and he ate most of his breakfast. Just like a car that makes a funny noise right up until the moment you drive into the service station.