Our seven-month-old browney-black kitten, Pete Briquette, had to have a certain operation recently, and it caused more trauma to my children than it did to him.
We tried to spare them all the details. But word got out, somehow. As the day approached, resentment grew towards the authority figures who were intent on deflowering him, and concerns were expressed that whatever came back from the vet’s surgery would not be “the same Pete”.
This was, of course, the point. As we tried to explain, even apart from the undesirability of him populating Dublin with little Petes, the operation was for his own good. It would calm him down a bit and, when he was eventually let loose on the neighbourhood, make him less likely to get into fights he couldn’t win. In the meantime, it might also prevent him killing our old cat with whom, throughout an uneasy winter, he’s been sharing the house.
Even so, the day the patient arrived back from the vet, still groggy from the anaesthetic and bearing a visible scar, it was like the scene from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest , after Jack Nicholson's lobotomy. There were tears among the house's other small inmates, and the adults who had precipitated the event were cast in the role of Nurse Ratcheds.
The poignancy climaxed when Pete staggered to his food bowl at one point, and almost fell in. Only the old cat seemed to be enjoying the situation. It’s always a mistake to try to read feline facial expressions, but I thought his was a malicious leer accompanied by the unspoken message: “You had it coming”.
Inevitably, however, the anaesthetic wore off. And after an indecently short period, the kitten’s personality reasserted itself. Within a day or two, he was again attacking shoe-laces, sinking his claws in the leather sofa, and jumping onto food preparation areas in defiance of threats of violence from food preparers. He even returned to cello practice with the same enthusiasm as before.
Obviously, the kitten himself doesn’t play the instrument. But my older son does, at least nominally. And what he lacks in enthusiasm is more than compensated by the kitten who, whenever he sees the shadow of the bow moving, drops anything else he’s doing to start chasing it around the floor. On the quicker pieces, even since the operation, he looks like a four-legged Rostropovich.
The old cat’s reprieve was also temporary. After a 72-hour ceasefire, the kitten resumed hostilities with an ambush from his favourite position – the ridge along the back of the couch – which overlooks the target’s only route from his sleeping quarters to the front door.
Since then, the attacks have become so routine that, in a classic counter-manoeuvre, the old cat has now taken to sleeping on the same part of the couch, seizing the high ground from his enemy.
Then there’s the kitten’s troubling toilet habits. Before the operation, despite having two litter trays to choose from, he was often wont to miss both and leave his deposits on the floor instead. It couldn’t be just bad aim: even on the law of averages, he should have hit the tray more often. Anyway, it was usually at the front or back door, which suggested territorial marking. But this too has resumed since his surgery.
I gather it can take several weeks for the hormonal changes to occur. It’s been nearly a month now and we’re still waiting. Meanwhile, as recently as 15 minutes ago, the kitten had another of those demented periods during which he careers around the house, bouncing off walls and furniture like a ricocheting bullet. Sometimes, I wonder if the vet removed the right part.
I’m told the toilet thing might be stress. And often, clearly, Pete is bored out of his tiny head. He spends long periods sitting at the window, staring lustfully at birds and other things he could be out killing. But the problem is that, until now, his unsupervised escapes from the house have usually ended in search-and-rescue operations.
As readers may recall, I first found Pete last summer when, as a week-old kitten located inexplicably in the middle of a bog road in Tipperary and disguised a piece of turf, he was nearly flattened by my car.
Several veterinary bills and much emotional investment later, we’re reluctant to release him to the mercies of Dublin traffic. But he’s nearly a cat-teenager now. So assuming the operation is a success, eventually, the time is nearing when we will have to liberate him, and let him take his chances again with the big bad world.
fmcnally@irishtimes.com