Every Living Thing (39 page)

“Look at the little beggars!” I said. “They still won’t have anything to do with me.”

It was frustrating, for throughout my years in veterinary practice, cats had always intrigued me and I had found that this helped me in my dealings with them. I felt I could handle them easier than most people because I liked them and they sensed it. I rather prided myself on my cat technique, a sort of feline bedside manner, and was in no doubt that I had an empathy with the entire species and that they all liked me. In fact, if the truth were told, I fancied myself as a cats’ pin-up. Not so, ironically, with these two—the ones to whom I had become so deeply attached.

It was a bit hard, I thought, because I had doctored them and probably saved their lives when they had cat ’flu. Did they remember that, I wondered, but if they did, it still didn’t give me the right to lay a finger on them. And indeed, what they certainly did seem to remember was that it was I who had netted them and shoved them into a cage when I had neutered them. I had the feeling that whenever they saw me it was that net and cage that were uppermost in their minds.

I could only hope that time would bring an understanding between us, but as it turned out, fate was to conspire against me for a long time still. Above all, there was the business of Olly’s coat. Unlike his sister, he was a longhaired cat and as such was subject to constant tangling and knotting of his fur. With an ordinary domesticated feline I would have combed him out as soon as trouble arose but when I couldn’t even get near him I was helpless. We had had him about two years when Helen called me to the kitchen.

“Just look at him!” she said. “He’s a dreadful sight!”

I peered through the window. Olly was indeed a bit of a scarecrow with his matted fur and dangling knots in cruel contrast with his sleek and beautiful little sister.

“I know, I know. But what can I do? But wait a minute, there’s a couple of horrible big lumps hanging below his neck. Take these scissors and have a go at them—a couple of quick snips and they’ll be off.”

Helen gave me an anguished look. “Oh, we’ve tried this before. I’m not a vet and anyway, he won’t let me do that. He’ll let me pet him, but this is something else.”

“I know that, but have a go. There’s nothing to it, really.” I pushed a pair of curved scissors into her hand and began to shout instructions through the window. “Right now, get your fingers behind that big dangling mass. Fine, fine! Now up with your scissors and—”

But at the first gleam of steel, Olly was off and away up the hill. Helen turned to me in despair. “It’s no good, Jim, it’s hopeless—he’ll never let me cut even one lump off and he’s covered with them.”

I looked at the dishevelled little creature standing at a safe distance from us. “Yes, you’re right. I’ll have to think of something.”

Thinking of something entailed doping Olly so that I could get at him, and my faithful Nembutal capsules sprang immediately to mind. This oral anaesthetic had been a valued ally on countless occasions where I had to deal with unapproachable animals, but this was different. With the other cases, my patients had been behind closed doors, but Olly was outside with all the wide countryside to roam in. I couldn’t have him going to sleep somewhere out there where a fox or other predator might get him. I would have to watch him all the time.

It was a time for decisions, and I drew myself up. “I’ll have a go at him this Sunday,” I told Helen. “It’s usually a bit quieter and I’ll ask Siegfried to stand in for me in an emergency.”

When the day arrived, Helen went out and placed two meals of chopped fish on the wall, one of them spiked with the contents of my Nembutal capsule. I crouched behind the window, watching intently as she directed Olly to the correct portion, holding my breath as he sniffed at it suspiciously. His hunger soon overcome his caution and he licked the bowl clean with evident relish.

Now we started the tricky part. If he decided to explore the fields as he often did, I would have to be right behind him. I stole out of the house as he sauntered back up the slope to the open log shed. To my vast relief he settled down in his own particular indentation in the straw and began to wash himself.

As I peered through the bushes, I was gratified to see that very soon he was having difficulty with his face, licking his hind paw, then toppling over as he brought it up to his cheek.

I chuckled to myself. This was great. Another few minutes and I’d have him.

And so it turned out. Olly seemed to conclude that he was tired of falling over and it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have a nap. After gazing drunkenly around him, he curled up in the straw.

I waited a short time, then, with all the stealth of an Indian brave on the trail, I crept from my hiding place and tiptoed to the shed. Olly wasn’t flat out—I hadn’t dared give him the full anaesthetic dose in case I had been unable to track him—but he was deeply sedated. I could pretty well do what I wanted with him.

As I knelt down and began to snip away with my scissors, he opened his eyes and made a feeble attempt to struggle, but it was no good and I worked my way quickly through the ravelled fur. I wasn’t able to make a particularly tidy job because he was wriggling slightly all the time, but I clipped off all the huge unsightly knots that used to get caught in the bushes, and must have been horribly uncomfortable, and soon had a growing heap of black hair by my side.

I noticed that Olly wasn’t only moving, he was watching me. Dazed as he was, he knew me all right and his eyes told me all. “It’s you again!” he was saying. “I might have known!”

When I had finished I lifted him into a cat cage and placed it on the straw. “Sorry, old lad,” I said. “But I can’t let you go free till you’ve wakened up completely.”

Olly gave me a sleepy stare, but his sense of outrage was evident. “So you’ve dumped me in here again. You don’t change much, do you?”

By tea-time he was fully recovered and I was able to release him. He looked so much better without the ugly tangles, but he didn’t seem impressed, and as I opened the cage he gave me a single disgusted look and sped away.

Helen was enchanted with my handiwork and she pointed eagerly at the two cats on the wall next morning. “Doesn’t he look smart! Oh, I’m so glad you managed to do him, it was really worrying me. And he must feel so much better.”

I felt a certain smug satisfaction as I looked through the window. Olly indeed was almost unrecognisable as the scruffy animal of yesterday and there was no doubt I had dramatically altered his life and relieved him of a constant discomfort, but my burgeoning bubble of self-esteem was pricked the instant I put my head round the door. He had just started to enjoy his breakfast but at the sight of me he streaked away faster than ever before and disappeared far over the hilltop. Sadly, I turned back into the kitchen. Olly’s opinion of me had dropped several more notches. Wearily I poured a cup of tea. It was a hard life.

T
HE LITTLE DOG STARED
straight ahead, immobile, as if glued to the kitchen table. He was trembling, apparently afraid even to move his head, and his eyes registered something akin to terror.

I had first seen him when Molly Minican, one of my neighbours in Hannerly, got him from Sister Rose’s dog sanctuary a few months ago, and I had been instantly charmed by his shaggy mongrel appeal and his laughing-mouthed friendliness. And now this.

“When did Robbie start with this, Molly?” I asked.

The old lady put out a hand towards her pet, then drew back.

“Just found ’im this morning. He was running around, last night, right as a bobbin.” She turned a worried face to me. “You know, he seems frightened you’re going to touch ’im.”

“He really does,” I said. “His whole body is rigid. It looks like an acute attack of rheumatism to me. Has he cried out in pain at all?”

The old lady shook her head. “No, not a sound.”

“That’s funny.” I ran my hand over the tense musculature of the little body and gently squeezed the neck. There was no response. “He would have shown some sign of pain there with rheumatism. Let’s see what his temperature says.”

It was like inserting the thermometer into a stuffed animal, and I whistled softly as I saw the reading—105° F.

“Well, we can forget about the rheumatism,” I said. “The temperature is nearly always dead normal in those cases.”

I made a thorough examination of the little animal, palpating his abdomen, auscultating his heart and lungs. The heart was pounding, but that was almost certainly due to fear. In fact I couldn’t find any abnormality.

“He must have picked up some infection, Molly,” I said. “And with a fever like that it could possibly be his kidneys. Anyway, thank goodness we have antibiotics now. We can really do a bit of good in these conditions.”

As I gave Robbie his shot, I thought, not for the first time, that in a way it was a relief to find the high temperature. It gave us something to get at with our new drugs. A puzzling case with a normal temperature was inclined to make me feel a bit helpless, and at the moment I felt reasonably confident, even though I wasn’t at all sure of my diagnosis.

“I’ll leave these tablets for you. Give him one at midday, another at bedtime and another first thing in the morning. I’ll have a look at him some time tomorrow.” I had the reassuring conviction that I was really blasting that temperature with the antibiotic. Robbie would be a lot better after twenty-four hours.

Molly seemed to think so too. “Ah, we’ll soon have ’im right.” She bent her white head over the dog and smiled. “Silly feller. Worrying us like this.”

She was a spinster in her seventies, and had always struck me as the archetypal Yorkshire woman; self-contained and unfussy, but with a quiet humour that was never far away. I had been called to her last dog when he was run over by a farm tractor and had arrived just as he was dying, and though it must have been a savage blow to a lone woman to lose her only companion, there had been no tears, just a fixed expression and a repeated slow stroking of the little body. Molly was strong.

She had taken my advice and visited Sister Rose’s kennels, where she found Robbie.

I lifted the dog from the table and put him down by his bed, but he just stood there and made no attempt to lie down. I felt another wave of bafflement as I looked at him.

I went over to the sink by the window to wash my hands and had to duck my head to see out into the garden. There was a rabbit there, sunning himself by a gnarled apple tree, and when he spotted me through the glass, he hopped away and disappeared through a hole in the ancient stone wall.

Everything about the tiny cottage was old; the low, beamed ceilings, the weathered stonework with its climbing ivy and clematis, the once-red roof tiles that sagged dangerously above the two bedroom windows that could not have measured more than eighteen inches square.

I had to bend my head again under the door lintel as I took my leave, and I glanced back at Robbie, still standing motionless by the side of his bed. A little wooden dog.

Molly was in her garden when I visited next day.

“Well, now, how’s Robbie?” I asked, rather more breezily than I felt.

My spirits dropped as the old lady hesitated and then was clearly trying to find something encouraging to say.

“Maybe a little better…but not much.”

He wasn’t a bit better, he was just the same, standing in the kitchen in the same attitude as the previous day. Still rigid, still trembling, and the frightened look in his eyes was replaced by a great lassitude.

I bent and stroked him. “Can’t he lie down at all?”

“Yes, but it’s difficult for ’im. He’s been in his bed for a few hours but when he gets out he’s like this.”

I took the temperature. Still exactly 105. I hadn’t even dented it with my antibiotic injection and tablets. With a feeling of bewilderment I repeated the injection, then I turned to Molly.

“I’d like to test his urine. When you carry him out to the garden to cock his leg try to catch a little in a clean soup-plate and put it in this bottle.”

Typically, Molly laughed. “Aye, I’ll try, but I might have a job.”

“Yes,” I said. “It can be tricky, but I’m sure you’ll manage. I’ll only need very little.”

On the following day, Robbie was unchanged. Even the temperature was resolutely stuck on 105. The urine test was normal—no protein, nothing to indicate kidney trouble.

I switched to another antibiotic and took a blood sample, which I sent to the investigation laboratory. The lab telephoned back that the sample was normal and after five daily visits and a negative X-ray examination the little dog had not improved.

I stood in the kitchen, looking down at my baffling patient. He was the picture of misery; utterly dejected, stiff and trembling. The grim reality was there before me. Unless I could pull something out of the bag, Robbie was going to die.

“I’ll have to try something else, Molly,” I said. I had with me one of the new steroid drugs, dexamethasone, and I injected 1 c.c.

“You must be sick of the sight of me, but I’ll call tomorrow morning to see if this new stuff has done any good.”

Molly didn’t wait till the next day. Her cottage was only about a hundred yards from my house and she was on my doorstep the same afternoon.

She was out of breath. “There’s a wonderful improvement, Mr. Herriot!” she gasped. “He’s like another dog. I wish you’d come and see ’im!”

I was only too eager and almost trotted along the road. Robbie looked almost like the little dog I used to know so well. He was still stiff, but he could walk carefully over the kitchen floor and his tail gave a slow wag as he saw me. The trembling was gone and he had lost his terrified look.

My relief was tremendous. “Has he eaten anything?”

“Yes, he had his nose in his bowl about two hours after you left.”

“Well, that’s wonderful.” I took the temperature and it was 102—on the way down at last. “I’ll still come tomorrow, because I think one more shot will put him absolutely right.”

It did indeed, and a week later it was good to see the little animal leaping around in his garden, playing with a stick. He was full of life, back to normal, and though it niggled me that I still had no idea what had ailed him, I was able to file away the whole episode comfortably in my mind as just another happy ending.