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Tuna Juice
by Eric Poor

 

Rindge is on the cusp of another annual rabies clinic. I checked the paperwork for the cats and found out we don’t need to be vaccinated for another year yet. That was a relief. I’m not sure I could face the veterinarian and keep a straight face. I only have to think about the last rabies clinic we attended and I burst into unrestrained fits of hilarity.

Every year Rindge has a rabies clinic during the month of April, which is also national poetry month. There’s something to be said here about poetic justice but I can’t quite get a firm hold on that thought. Anyhow, they have the clinic on a Saturday and sometimes they do the dogs and cats separately to avoid rioting, and sometimes they just, what the hell, mix things up.

They open the bay doors of the fire station and move a few of the big trucks out onto the asphalt apron and half the fire station becomes the walk-through rabies clinic. One person takes down the pet’s information and checks the date of the last immunization to determine if Rover or Puss needs one year of protection or three. Then the veterinarian loads his syringe and, sometimes with the assistance of Larry the Animal Control Officer, vaccinates the now wary pet who sometimes suspects something not good is about to occur. Some of these pets have seen this particular veterinarian before … and word gets around in the waiting line. Once vaccinated, another person takes the money and issues a rabies certificate and tag. Oh, and the Town Clerk is there, too. Just in case you haven’t gotten your dog license.

We have two seriously overweight housecats. They really are housecats – fat, lazy felines who haven’t been outdoors for so long they are intimidated at the very thought. They are housecats because we got tired of feeding cats to the wildlife. There is a long list of former felines who have mysteriously disappeared from the woods surrounding the poorhouse. Least you think these present, surviving cats are somehow deprived of a worldly existence let me assure you we do accompany them outside once or twice a summer. Those excursions usually end when one of them cries to be let in to use the litterbox, never having had the joy of “going” outdoors, and the other goes in too, unable to face the concept of being outside alone with just people.

They have very different personalities. Dot is … how do I put this delicately? … kind of bipolar. She has drawn blood from just about everyone who has tried to befriend her. She’s got attitude – mostly bad attitude.

Big Fella (we’ve forgotten his original name) is a coal black fraidy cat. Just look at him wrong and he’ll scurry under a bed. Raise your voice and you won’t see him for a week.

Anyhow the day of that last fateful rabies clinic came on the same day when the town dump (exccccusssse me -- Trash Transfer Station and Recycling Center) was open, and the trash had been piling up around the poorhouse. So I asked Marsha to put the cats in the cat carriers while I took the trash, cans and bottles, paper and plastics to the … you know. The plan was that I’d get shed of the trash and recyclables and then we’d rush the cats to the fire station with all kinds of time to spare.

When I got home from the … you know … Dot was in one cat carrier. And the other one was empty, door ajar.

“He got away and I can’t find him,” Marsha said.

She had done exactly what I would have done – put the cat with bad attitude in her crate first. We always like to get the hard part over with right away. We just didn’t realize exactly what the hard part was going to be.

So, with the clock ticking away, we searched the house from top to bottom. Twice. We finally found Big Fella hiding upstairs in the loft/master bedroom. A sixteen-pounder, he had somehow made himself small enough to hide behind a leg of the bedstead. We didn’t approach him, figuring he would simply scurry to a new hiding spot. Instead we endeavored to lure him out into the open.

Tuna juice is the best cat lure. You all know what tuna juice is, right? It’s the “packed in water” water that’s in a can of tuna fish. Cats love it. Whenever we open a can of tuna at the poorhouse we sprinkle that tuna water on the dry catfood in the cats’ dish and announce: tuna juice! Then we step back to avoid getting caught in the two-cat stampede.

Figuring one person is less scary than two and that Marsha was the least scary of the two of us, we sent her upstairs with a bowl of straight tuna juice, about three cans worth. She set it on the floor beside the bed and got up on the bed with a laundry basket in hand and coaxed him out of hiding with the sweet refrain of : “tuna juice, Big Fella, tuna juice.”

He fell for it and when he did Marsha pounced, upside-down laundry basket first, and captured the cat. There was an immediate, unfortunate explosion of tuna juice. Plastic laundry baskets being well ventilated that splashy explosion was pretty much unrestrained. Marsha’s refrain switched over to: “help, Eric, help.”

I rushed upstairs, lifted one corner of the upside-down-Marsha-on-top-plastic-laundry basket and caught the cat by the scruff of the neck. And tried to put him into the cat carrier …

Once, as a bartender in a locally infamous gin mill, I watched the bar owner, John, give a rowdy customer the Bum’s Rush. He had the guy by the back of his collar and the seat of his pants and he ran him at the door. But at the last second the guy stuck out both hands and both feet and caught himself on the door jamb.

Big Fella did something similar.

What John did with the drunk was turn him sideways and complete the bum’s rush, locking the door for good measure.

What I did was approximately the same. And Big Fella was finally securely unhappy in the cat carrier.

We made it to the rabies clinic with time to spare. Fortunately, the bulk of the crowd had already come and gone. I say fortunately, because we were in quite a state. We were smelling pretty fishy and barely able to stop the giggles.

So the rabies certificates for Dot and Big Fella say we have another year to go before we have to do this again. Next time Big Fella goes into the carrier first. Meanwhile, in case we might forget, whenever the weather stays wet for a while the master bedroom of the poorhouse takes on the ambiance of a fishing trawler.

Oh, and at the mere mention of “tuna juice” Big Fella runs and hides under the bed.