Heigh ho, off to the vet's

Last week I reached a breaking point in realising that I had not had any days off, any time off, any time away from church matters. I was inundated by emails from church-related entities and it was driving me crazy. So I decided that Monday, Thursday truly are my days off (I am paid 2/3 minimum compensation which means that I get a paid day off a week and two unpaid days) and that means no church-related emails and an attempt to keep church-related work to a minimum. I had let that slide too much in the past couple of years and all of sudden last week, it really caught up with me.

It's hard, however, to maintain that barrier without guilt or panic and I did spend some time working on Executive Council things because I am up against a deadline. And this evening I worked with a parishioner on our emerging church web site (hooray).

But the major portion of the afternoon was hauling two cats off to the vet's. I have the Unholy Trinity who are the full in-house residents and since 21 December I have a semi-feral stray, the Waif, in the back half of the upstairs of the rectory, a sort of unfinished part of the house over the kitchen. Today was the big day of taking Orange Boy and the Waif to the vet's.

The World's Best Cat Sitter wanted to come along so she kept Orange Boy (aka Mr Cool) company in the backseat while I had the Wild Waif in the front seat. Needless to say, both felines were in cages... partly because they have never met!

They still aren't going to meet because I need to go through the two-week process of deworming the Waif (pilling her went OK tonight; tomorrow I get to squirt 2ccs of nasty banana [????? why do they do that for animals? it's stupid]-flavoured goop into her mouth). At that, the Waif may continue to enjoy a private suite in the back half of the upstairs while the Unholy Trinity maintains its turf in the rest of the house.

Keeping two potential warring factions apart is a good diversion, ¿no?

The people at ORAH are good. When another Orange Boy of mine died in 1999, the vet was so gentle with me, bringing him to me, wrapped up in a blanket and letting me stay in an examining room with him for as long as I needed. They know not only how to handle the animals with love and care but also the people.

(I am sorry they no longer have week-end emergency care — I am not sure about basic boarding; if there's an emergency, one has to drive 50 miles upstream to a fancy, fancy animal hospital. I guess it just wasn't cost effective to stay open during week-ends. )

I have long thought that if I ever get to retire, I would become a non-denominational chaplain in a vet's waiting room. There's all sorts of life stuff that happens for which a chaplain would be appropriate... like the time I was waiting to get the former Orange Boy's ashes, and I made small chat with a 20-something woman. I asked if she was waiting to get a pet and she said she was paying for her kitten who had died. I made appropriate noises and asked how it had died and she said that her boyfriend had beaten it to death. I simply said that if he could do that to a kitten then he could do it to her if he wasn't already doing it and she needed to be really, really careful. Or the time that I saw an old Vermont farmer, all 'broke down,' sitting in the waiting area with an empty leash in his hand. You didn't have to ask. You knew he'd just brought in his dog to have it euthanised. So, yeah, if I ever get to retire, and a vet would like one, I'll be a chaplain to the creatures and humans alike.