Two weeks from today I will be 31.

It's true.

I will officially be closer to 40 than to 20. It's only a matter of time now before I resort to Clairol to cover my greys (I already have the one, but so far this battle can be fought in Tweezer Land). I will live a life of cardigans. I will buy those little tray tables for us to comfortably eat on the sofa like sensible people when something is good on the tv, as opposed to now, when I sit on the floor and contort like a magician in front of the cute but impractical coffee table.

40 is coming.

With this in mind, I decide to spruce myself up a bit today. It's a special day after all-not only do I have three conference calls and emails to catch up on, but I also have to take my girls to the vet for their shots. I took their kennel out of the attic last night, the one they made their nearly fatal trip from Sweden over in, and set it in the study (it has a tag on the front from SAS Airlines saying: "Two Live Cats". Angus looked at me and wryly said "They should have put the word 'Barely' in there". Sedation was a lesson we will never forget).

Once the kennel was in the study, the cats couldn't keep out of it. My daft girls, they never learn. When the cat god was handing out survival instincts, my cats were busy playing with something shiny.

Whitney Houston's local vet is someone that was regaled to me by Billie, one of the book club ladies. She owns a Bernese Mountain Dog puppy, a giant that doesn't run he bounces (cause bouncing's what Tiggers do best). At the book club, she leaned over to me.

"You have to take your girls to the local vet. He's a lovely and handsome Australian man. I even dress up a bit for him." she said, swigging a sip of her chardonnay.

Blimey. Billie is so comfortable with who she is that she's the definition of earthy crunchy granola woman. I can't even imagine her dressing up for a knighting ceremony. With this in mind, I take an extra minute to get ready-I'm know I'm not hot, but still. Effort, people, effort. Lip gloss, a dash of laundromat perfume, sparkly white T-shirt. I mean-I'm closer to 50 than I am to 10 now. It's time to start making sure I look after myself. I don't want a new guy, I am perfectly happy with my Angus, but still-no one likes to be the one where people shake their heads and say: She really let herself go, huh?

I get the girls in the kennel and brace myself. My cats are very good about the kennel and about a vet visit, but they are hell on earth while in transit. In the car I am treated to a rousing rendition of "Stairway to Heaven" in the keys of C and F sharp as my cats scream with such unholy terror you'd think I was taking them to an abattoir.

When we get to the vet I drive for a bit before finding parking on the high street. I have to wait for the dotty driver to pull out of the space before I can pull in, and a silly chick talking on her mobile in a minivan nearly rear-ends us. Since she's talking and can't be bothered with passing me, she starts a traffic jam. People in cars behind her start honking their horns. My cats go ballistic and I am wondering why I didn't buy any of the Mexican Zoloft that seemed so prevalent in Tijuana.

We park and go in, me lugging them in their heavy carrier. Unusually, they are still screaming in agony as I walk into the vet's. A woman in a lavender suit sits there holding a cage with a dwarf rabbit, her friend squeezing her hand in support. A veterinary nurse comes out with a bottle of something and explains that it's ok, that mange is completely treatbale.

Nice.

I walk up to the desk and set my paperwork down. Being someone who has immigrated countries twice, I have learnt the golden rule: keep every single piece of paper that you accumulate, no matter what. If it means you will thus be carrying around a binder of information on two domestic shorthair housecats, so be it. I'd rather look anal retentive than be rejected.

The receptionist looks at me. He grins. "Welcome to Whitney Houston Vets. Really nice day, isn't it?" he asks. He has a lisp and a speech impediment, so it comes out as "Weally nice day, ithn't it?" I grin back.

I present all my paperwork and he starts to write up new records for my girls. Once this exhaustive process is complete, I sit down. My girls are still screaming like someone is dipping their tails in hot wax, and Mangy Rabbit Woman's friend looks at me like I'm a bunny boiler. I feel the need to explain that they are just unhappy in the carrier, that I haven't been dressing them up and applying make-up to them. The receptionist approaches Mangy Rabbit Woman.

"Now, you need to uthe thith twithe a day." he explains. "Don't uthe too much, or you may kill the wabbit."

That slays me in the deepest childish parts of my psyche. I so desperately want him to sing the line a la Elmer Fudd in What's Opera, Doc?: "Oh, Bwoom-hilda, you're so wuve-wy...." that it makes me have to pee. I cross my legs and try not to smile. He stands up and smiles at me.

"The doctor will thee you now. Go on in exam one. If you can, take one of your cat-th out, ok?"

Yes I know it, I can't help it....

I lug the heavy case in the room, sweating with exertion and with my hair drifting over my face. I set the case on the floor and pry an autistic Maggie out of the case. The room is a typical vet's exam room, complete with a tiny pile of pet hair that has drifted towards the door. I hold Maggie for a second and then put her on the table.

I look at my shirt and realize that Maggie has somehow had a sympathetic reaction to the drifting hair by the door. She has exploded in a haze of shedding all down the front of my shirt. It's as though she was a mushroom puffball and released a cloud of toxic black hair. I look like I have been body wrestling with Robin Williams.

Speaw and Magic Hewmet! Speaw and Magic Hewmet!

I am sweaty, tired-looking and covered with hair. I'm like a cat-owning version of Lynette from Desperate Housewives. The vet comes in...and it's a woman. An Englishwoman. No sign of my Crocodile Hunter anywhere. "Hello, I'm Doctor Doolittle," she says. (She wasn't really called that, I just don't think it's fair to use her real name.)

I realize I got all excited for nothing. Wishful lip-glossing. As I am now closer to 60 than I am to birth, it was for nothing that my ego day-dreamed getting admiring glances from an Aussie vet. I would not get the chance to ask him to say for me: Crikey, there's a crikey crock! Dr. Doolittle looks at my shirt.

"I brushed them last night. I think it's nerves." I say weakly. I pray to god that no anal glands explode in here, or else I can never show my face in this vet's office again as they burn all of the linen in the room.

She nods. "Which one is this?" she asks.

"It's Maggie," I say, petting her. In the corner Mumin continues to howl in aguinsh. Maggie is laying flatter than a pancake on the table and will not move as I stroke her shoulders. She's like stone. I can't even detect if she's breathing she's so still. The vet listens to her heart.

"Good strong heartbeat." she says, removing the bits from her ears.

Good. So she is breathing then.

The vet gives her the shots and when I pick Maggie up I find that she has left perfect sweaty paw prints on the table, a la The Sixth Sense. I get Mumin, who is now mewly weakly as though exhausted from the effort of peril, out of the kennel. I pet her and find she is exploding in fur too, and I now look like King Kong's love child. Unlike her sister, Mumin is all over the place trying to check out the smells. The vet listens to her heart and gets the needles out. Mumin rubs against her, trying to be pet, oblivious to the danger looming ahead.

That cat never was very bright.

Once done, the vet smiles. "Your cats are very healthy. They are a bit fat, though."

I take offense to that. "We prefer big-boned." I say defensively. The vet looks at me. "Slow metabolism." I assert.

OK, so they have gained a bit of weight, but you would too if you no longer had a rambunctious collie chasing you around the house.

We go to the reception and the receptionist looks at me brightly. "Everything go ok?" he asks, eyeing my new hairshirt.

I smile back. My cats start screaming in the kennel again. The people on the chairs, including an older man with an intrigued looking spaniel, regard me as a baby killer.

"They weally don't like the kennel, do they?" he asks.

Kill the wabbit! Kill the wabbit! Kill the wabbit, the wabbit is dead!

"Not really." I reply.

I part with nearly £200 and wearily agree to come back in three weeks-in Sweden they don't vaccinate for feline leukemia, so we had to do that here plus a booster in three weeks. In three weeks time, after I have turned 31 and therefore will be closer to death than birth, I will come back.

Dressed in black, no makeup, and tranquilized.

-H.

PS-Angus and I are off to London tonight to meet this lovely man. He's only the fourth blogger I have ever met, the fabulous others being Simon, Emily, and Stinkerbell. He will then be able to prove that both Angus and I, contary to reports, are real

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 10:48 AM | Comments (16) | Add Comment
Post contains 1758 words, total size 9 kb.

1 Oh my god, you made me fall off my chair with the Elmur Fudd inserts, genius! I'm glad your girls are ok, even if they did howl. Ours always scream at us to be let out, and then when you do open the cage in the vets they won't shift! There's on pleasing some felines. And at the risk of trotting out and old and tired phrase... "you're only as old as you feel". Ok so you may be physically 31 but will you really feel it? I doubt it. Deep down you'll always be the Helen we know and love, youthful with a wicked sense of humour. Enjoy your trip to London. And don't worry, we know you exist! AxXx

Posted by: Lemurgirl at March 18, 2005 11:31 AM (CxeTi)

2 Now I have Kill the Wabbit in my head for the balance of the day. Maybe I work it in when I talk to people at work today. No St. Pat's updates?

Posted by: drew at March 18, 2005 01:16 PM (CBlhQ)

3 Oh man. I know just what you mean about the Elmer Fudd visions. I too wil be humming "Kill the wabbit" all day. Thanks a lot.

Posted by: Easy at March 18, 2005 01:29 PM (dH3dd)

4 St. Patrick's Day tends to not be a big deal here in England. I had completely forgotten about it, until I saw the header on the Google page was covered in Shamrocks! I didn't wear green and no one pinched my ass (although Angus and I had some rumpy-bumpy, if that counts).

Posted by: Helen at March 18, 2005 02:05 PM (Vd6WF)

5 HOLY SHT!! 1200 for the shots!! Unbelievable.

Posted by: butterflies at March 18, 2005 04:04 PM (+dsv9)

6 Ah, the nervous shedding. I used to have a cat would produce enormous tumbleweeds of fur every time he went to the vet. No cats now, just dogs. No nervous shedding with them, but one of them gets a runny nose when he goes to the vet. A sad little drip that trembles at the end of his snout... For what it's worth, I'm halfway through 31 and rather enjoying it. Forty's nothing. It's 50 that worries me.

Posted by: cari at March 18, 2005 04:29 PM (b5vXu)

7 Katze is so mellow about the vet, you'd think we had slipped her a roofie. Poor little Zwack, on the other hand...last time I had a massive allergy attack mid-exam from the furballs she was releasing. They had to vacuum the room afterward, no joke. But no one ever refers to our girls as chunky - together they weigh 9 pounds. My HANDS must weigh more than that.

Posted by: Kaetchen at March 18, 2005 04:44 PM (1nMRx)

8 Sorry-perhaps there's an error with the £ sign in my post. I paid 200 pounds for their shots (about $400 USD), which is bad enough. 1200 was the fee for bringing two farm cats from Sweden to England so I could love on them daily. If that ain't love, I'm doing it wrong.

Posted by: Helen at March 18, 2005 05:21 PM (Vd6WF)

9 First of all, this was hysterical, Helen, thanks for making me laugh so hard first thing this morning. And, yeah, cats shed a lot when they're nervous, don't they? Mine leave hairs *everywhere* when they go to the vet. Next, c'mon now, don't sweat the age thing. I'm almost *50*! Thassss right! Two years from now the big 5-0. And I still sit on the floor to eat when I feel like it, I still check out new music and new movies, I still have long hair, I don't own any cardigan sweaters, I still dress sexy as all get out at times and I still get hit on. Not to mention I'm having better sex today and more frequently than ever before in my life. I still even get ID'd! It's rare but it still happens. Of course, I've been getting my hair tinted for the last 20 years so I have no freakin' CLUE how much gray is really up there..but a lot of age is simply attitude. For some inexplicable reason, some women cut all their hair off, stop wearing makeup, stop laughing, stop having orgasms and turn into these massive, unhappy dreary lumps after a certain age and I cannot figure out for the life of me why. I only know that is never going to be me. :-) And it doesn't have to be you either. Everybody has to age, but you don't have to *act* like it. And have a wonderful time meeting RP! Oh, I'm envious....enjoy enjoy! *smiles*

Posted by: Amber at March 18, 2005 06:48 PM (zQE5D)

10 The last time we took ours to the vet, the male only got his shots, not examined or anything, because he WASN'T HAVING IT, thankyouverymuch. Next time, I'm telling them to not only have a muzzle handy but a burly second person to hold him still. Wonderful sweet cat who turns into thirteen pounds of flailing lunatic hissy kitty at the vets...

Posted by: B. Durbin at March 18, 2005 08:16 PM (e+pdA)

11 Oh, give it up... I know that you are really a fat, bald man in Ohio! Oh, wait a minute... that's me! What are you TALKING about: "I know I'm not hot, but still." You are like, SO hot. And I sound SO like Paris Hilton when I say that. Also, what are you talking about here? (Yeah, I'm taking issue with you today, aren't I? Getting all fresh with you in your comments!): "after I have turned 31 and therefore will be closer to death than birth..." No you won't! 'Cause, you see, I've already put in a request that you should at LEAST live to be 100. Don't thank me now, it's all selfish, you see. I want to be entertained by you for at LEAST the next 70 years. And I know my Math isn't hot, but even I know that if you have more than 31 years to live (which you will if you live to be more than 100), then you won't be closer to death than birth yet. Therefore, girl, you are but a spring chicken.

Posted by: redsaid at March 18, 2005 11:08 PM (ULA2y)

12 200 pounds? What did she inject them with? Liquid gold? Yikes! Have fun tonight. And don't forget to take pictures.

Posted by: Jim at March 19, 2005 01:31 AM (MDLz3)

13 Your b-day is two days after mine. I 'll hoist a few to you.

Posted by: Brass at March 19, 2005 08:24 PM (6TLEO)

14 I turn 40 in 2 months. I guess I better go get my cardigans. Oh... wait... I live in Florida!!! heh! Have fun in London!

Posted by: Boudica at March 20, 2005 02:05 AM (z7nbM)

15 Loved the running gag about aging. I was waiting for you to say you are closer to 70 than you are to conception... but you jumped straight to death!

Posted by: Terry at March 20, 2005 02:19 PM (EeYgK)

16 you have now baptised the new workplace computer. King Kongs Love Child... But seriously stop talking about geting old. You are not much older than I and really the French already have given me an aging complex and well their consulates have aged me intensely. And I get a mention in the special hall of fame What a post. By the way will be over on your side of the Channel in May!

Posted by: stinkerbell at March 21, 2005 03:17 PM (ZznPv)

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