And Then I Stepped in Gum . . .

Beware the Saturn L300 of Doom

I've been driving for 16 years. I wouldn't say I'm the best driver in the world, but I'm not the worst. I've had a couple of accidents, but they were all slow-speed, parking lot or snowy road fender benders, and no one was hurt in any of them. But lately I seem to have become a menace to small furry creatures.

I started this blog a little while ago, and one of my first posts was about hitting a rabbit on the road. I felt bad, but I also reasoned that that was the chance the poor bunny took when bounding across the highway at 1 in the morning. Today I had a worse experience. I hit a cat that leapt in front of my car on my neighborhood street.

I stopped immediately, and looked into my rear view mirror, hoping I hadn't actually hit it, only to see it writhing at the side of the road. I ran out of the car to the cat, and petted him gently as he twitched a few more times, thinking that if it was just a broken leg or something, I would take him to a vet. Unfortunately, he died. He was probably a stray -- he had no collar or tags, and he wasn't particularly clean -- but I feel awful. I don't know what to do to make up for it.

All I can say is, this is just one more reason for our cats to stay inside the house. I would hate to know that one of our pets died like that -- alone at the side of the road, with no one to know what happened.

Speaking of cats, we have had a change in situation regarding our nasty, evil cat, Zara, whom we were considering putting down to put her (and us) out of her misery before we moved. Long story short, for about the last 8 months, Zara has been more evil than ever (she was always a bit grumpy), and has been unable to tolerate our other cat, Ophelia. Most of the time, Zara holed up in our room, refusing to come out to the rest of the house. We took her to the vet, and even put her on a type of kitty Prozac, but nothing helped. Lately she's been getting a little bit better, but not that much. Still, it was enough that we were considering commuting her death sentence. So the other day I called the vet to ask about the process of euthanasia, so that we had all the information we needed. He suggested a last-ditch medication -- last-ditch because it has the potential to cause diabetes or sudden bone marrow failure (and death), though that's relatively rare. He wrote the prescription, I picked it up that afternoon, and we started Zara on it a few days ago.

Oh. My. God. It's a miracle -- we almost have our old Zara back. She's coming out in the living room (I keep being surprised by her, since I don't expect to see here there). She's purring. She's snuggling. She's able to come within 2 feet of Ophelia without growling and hissing and freaking out. She's playing with us. She's scratching the sofa again (OK, that's not the most desirable thing, but it's something she hasn't done since she changed, because whenever she has been in the living room, she's just slunk around the perimeter of the room or hidden under the end table). I'm so glad this seems to be working for her.

Now we just have to figure out the logistics of getting her and Ophelia down to Alabama next month at a minimum of cost, effort, and trauma. At the moment, the plan seems to be that we'll fly my sister and her fiance up here and have them drive the two cats down in our second car, which will save us the $1,000 we've been quoted for transporting the car and the ~$800 it would cost us to board and transport the cats. Let's hope the happy hormones keep Zara in good spirits through all the changes!

posted by Jennifer Morgan, at 9:26 PM