Daily Slog Blog (Sick Cat Edition)

I feel slightly less effervescent and ebullient than usual, and maybe part of the explanation is that yesterday I started the day by rushing the cat to the emergency veterinary hospital, where he was pronounced not that bad, took him home, worked hard at work, went home, and rushed the cat to the emergency veterinary hospital again, where he was pronounced a little bad after all. They flushed him out and said that he was now in reasonably good working order again but they wanted to keep him overnight to make sure. I got home and made dinner somewhere around 9:30 p.m., and all this is physically and emotionally draining, so I'm less effervescent. If you need someone to be upbeat I'm sure Katie Couric is on TV somewhere or other.

I realized yesterday that all this has given me a strange ambition. There was a great film that came out in 1987, The Last Emperor, about the last emperor (of course) of China. Puyi is the guy in question, and he becomes emperor when he's a toddler, and part of being emperor back in the nineteen-teens was that about five doctors made it a habit to grab the royal chamberpot and hold it right up to their faces to examine by sight and smell the royal leavings. (The French medical profession is similarly interested in leavings: I understand French doctors will typically ask you, "Comment sont vos selles?" You're expected to provide an appropriate description: Your selles have been hard, soft, a particular color, whatever.)

I mention this because for years I would clean the cat's litter box, taking its contents pretty much for granted. But in the past few days I've been watching that box, trying to ascertain how much the cat has been peeing, and whether he's been peeing all at once, or in dribs and drabs. What I've been looking for is evidence that the cat has peed all at once, frankly and forthrightly, the way he used to, and when I see that again I'll smile with gratification. I thought about that, and the image of those Chinese doctors came to mind. At any rate, that's my main ambition for the immediate future. They say the cat will probably be able to come home today, and I know that the first time he uses the litter box, I'll come up and take the lid off and peer in, like a Chinese doctor of yesteryear, my heart full of hope.