More on Tucker? Why Not?

Just in case anyone reading this hasn’t had his surfeit of Tucker, here’s another report.

It has been a few weeks since I wrote about him, and he did undergo a major operation. The poor fellow wasn’t through yet. As reported earlier, he suffered an infection. What's new is that, once the first infection was cleared up, he acquired another. This necessitated a further visit to the veterinarian. He was poked and prodded some more, and some of his bodily fluids despatched to Calgary for analysis.

He had two kinds of bacteria at once, and has been given a new medicine. It comes in the form of a little pill. The instructions on the package say to give him one pill three times a day. How can I give him the same pill three times? That would be impossible, as he swallows each pill and it dissolves in his stomach. Once that semantical difficulty was overcome, all I had to do was force Tucker to take his medicine. He must take three pills a day for 28 days. My poor roly poly.

He is remarkably easy-going about it. He doesn’t fight much; his resistance is passive, and he has become adept at hiding the pill, even after several mouthfuls of water injected by syringe to make sure it goes down. But I haven’t lost a pill yet. And my roly poly doesn’t take umbrage at his manhandling. I tell him afterward that he is a good boy and I rub his fuzzy head. He purrs.

He is a cat who wants to be happy. I believe that he likes his little world and enjoys himself most of the time. I judge his well-being by how he plays and how he purrs.

He is currently feeling very good. The latest infection had him feeling low, but he has conquered it and is his old self. He has discovered something about the new rug. He can slide on it. When we are playing with a string toy, he will throw his forefeet out in front of him and push himself with his rear legs, as though he were a sled. It’s one of the silliest things I’ve ever seen. Trust Tucker to come up with it.

He also plays peek-a-boo with me. I was picking something off the floor next the bed last night. Tucker was on the bed. I looked at him over the edge of the bedspread, then ducked down again. He started purring immediately. When I peeked over again, he lowered his head quickly, only to raise it when I lowered mine.

It’s moments like that that make me feel the amount of money spent on the little fellow’s health to be insignificant. But then, I’d be kidding myself if I thought each of my cats didn’t give me a similar moment every day.