Ever by My Side

by Nick Trout

  “Does he know about me?”

  “No, not really,” said Dad.

  “Well, he either does or he doesn’t.”

  Dad looked uncomfortable, as though I had caught him in a lie.

  “I suppose it’s never come up.”

  I didn’t press the issue. How could I? My father needed to develop a connection with a veterinarian of his own. Never given to bragging, what would he stand to gain by telling this man his son was training to be a veterinary surgical specialist? And there was no dig, no reprisal in his comment. It was simply fact.

  To be honest, when I tried to examine Whiskey I was thankful there was an independent doctor in the picture. Prior to going to America, I could fake my way through a cursory examination, integrating enough pats and scratches with genuine palpation to get a reasonable sense of his physical well-being. A few years later and Whiskey’s fear memory was much sharper, his growl a warning of serious intent.

  “Whoa, I think my work here is done.”

  Dad apologized for the outburst, even though Whiskey and I were already buddies again, a golden muzzle rooting for my hand and forgiveness.

  “You think you’ll ever get a dog of your own?” Dad asked as he watched us roughhouse. Whiskey loved these games, puffing up, all frisky if I tickled his nose with his own feather duster tail, or if tried to encourage him to take a bite.

  Earlier, I had changed Emily’s diaper, laying her down on the duvet in my parents’ bedroom. She had been wearing a wool cardigan, and when I picked her up my daughter had transformed into a retriever puppy, she was so covered in golden hairs. Was this observation a sign of my new appreciation for the tidiness of cats over the shedding of hairy dogs?

  “I don’t know. I think so. At some point in time, maybe when life is a little less hectic.”

  Dad looked troubled, as though my answer was too vague, as though getting a dog sounded too much like a chore to be put off, perhaps abandoned altogether.

  “Does Kathy not like dogs?”

  I worked my brain around the question and shook my head.

  “She’s had dogs her whole life. She had a husky who lived to be sixteen and then a standard poodle. Right now, neither of us has enough time to devote to a dog. That’s why independent Reggie is perfect.”

  Dad winced on a sharp intake of breath, as though I had uttered words of blasphemy, or at least infidelity.

  “It’s true. He’s such a great cat. He’s tough but affectionate. He’s autonomous but loves to be with you. He’s our little man. I’ve even found myself missing him since we’ve been away, wondering if he’s all right.”

  This declaration of feline love did little to assuage my father’s fear of never seeing me with a dog of my own. Fiona, he knew, was a lost cause. No point in even trying to persuade her to get a dog. But now his son, the veterinarian, was sleeping with the enemy, preferring the company of a cat. James Herriot would turn in his grave.

  Nearly twenty years had passed since an anxious little boy fretted over uprooting his beloved German shepherd when his family decided to move to another town. Now it was my turn to be the father, to uproot my family and do right by an altogether different but no less important animal, Reginald C. Cat.

  With the completion of my residency and a limited number of job opportunities, I decided to take a chance on a job as a surgeon at a small specialty practice in Arizona. Kathy was up for something different—happy to help run the business in her spare time as a stay-at-home mom—but her biggest concern was Reggie.

  “He’ll be fine,” I said. “How different can it possibly be?”

  And all of a sudden I realized I was taking a barn cat and basically dropping him in the middle of Mars. The Sonoran Desert has a unique beauty, spectacular space, saguaro forests, and light like nowhere else on earth, but it is rife with fauna and flora designed to pierce, maim, or kill an unsuspecting indoor/outdoor cat.

  I can’t imagine poor Reggie’s astonishment when he first stepped foot in his new home. Here was a cat rooted in routine, and without his approval I had canceled his membership in the barn he thought of as a country club and traded woodlands and green grass for cacti and barren caliche soil. He was a creature of four seasons, adept at finding a warm nest in the winter, cool shadows on a humid July afternoon. Suddenly it was practically summer all year round, and by now I knew enough about Reggie to believe the stock phrase “but it’s a dry heat” would be met with the response “so is the inside of a blast furnace!”

  For the longest time Kathy and I debated about converting Reggie to a life indoors. There seemed to be so much unprecedented danger out there. If a jumping cholla didn’t get him, there was always a scorpion, a Gila monster, a tarantula, or a pack of coyotes. How could a street-smart New England kitty survive in a desert? But, as it turned out, we couldn’t wean the independent streak out of him. He clawed and pawed, demanding to be outside. At first we watched him from a distance, monitoring his route, as though we might be able to intervene the first time he got into a fight with a rattlesnake. But after a while, when he returned home with nothing more than the occasional cactus spine caught up in his fur, we began to worry less.

  By the time the gifts started to arrive, I knew Reggie was becoming acclimatized to his new surroundings. By gifts I mean dead, eviscerated small birds and rodents, deposited on the welcome mat at our front door. Every morning I would get up, step outside to retrieve the newspaper from the driveway, and my bare foot would be hovering over another sacrificial offering.

  “This is getting out of control,” I told Kathy. “It’s disgusting. Do you think he’s trying to punish us?”

  “Maybe or maybe he’s trying to let us know he’s having a good time, enjoying life as a desert predator. He probably thinks we can’t take care of ourselves so he feels obliged to provide for us.”

  “All I know is I’m cleaning entrails off the doormat far more often than I want to.”

  Truth is you can’t take the hunting instinct out of a creature perfectly designed to hunt. Imprisonment seemed too cruel for Reggie. It’s like first class and coach. Get the taste for the good life and there’s no going back. We briefly tried the collar fitted with a small bell but he was having none of it.

  The problem was brought to a head, however, when Sally, a new neighborhood friend, dropped by for late-morning coffee and was forced to step across a threshold on which lay another of Reggie’s anatomical experiments on wildlife. Apologies were made and Sally seemed to find the display more curious than repulsive, but the damage appeared to be done. Reggie was labeled as a feline serial killer with a penchant for displaying his victims in public.

  Some weeks later I found myself joining a veterinary colleague as co-host of a local talk-radio pet show. We were taking live phone calls and after all my years of surgical specialization it wasn’t long before I realized how useless I was when it came to answering the kinds of questions most pet owners really want to ask—all that important stuff regarding vaccines, nutrition, and behavior that I had managed to forget. For the most part I found myself either deferring to the other doctor or mumbling a vague answer. The hour crawled along until a woman called in and said, “I have a cat that brings me dead birds and mice and deposits them on my doormat every morning. What can I do to stop this behavior because it’s driving me nuts!”

  “Me too,” I said, leaning forward into the microphone, suddenly all animated. “My cat Reggie does exactly the same thing. And you’re right, it’s so annoying.”

  I related the story of Sally’s recent visit, and how embarrassed I’d been over Reggie’s inappropriate offering, and talked briefly about the feline predatory instinct, about how there wasn’t much you could do unless you enforced an indoor lifestyle.

  I finished up genuinely pleased to have taken her call, telling the audience, if there really was anyone out there listening, “Wow. What were the chances! I’m glad to know I’m not the only cat lover out there suffering at the hands of a skilled hunter.” />
  When I returned home I received a phone call from Sally, letting me know how much she enjoyed the show. How nice of her, I thought, hanging up, but at the same time, I was struck by something that felt a little off. Sally seemed, I don’t know, almost giddy, as though her sincerity was teetering on the brink of snickering. And then it hit me … her voice … I recognized her voice. Sally had been the woman calling in about a cat who insisted on delivering daily hunting gifts. Sally had been seeking advice from me about my Reggie!

  Ironically, as it turned out, the biggest danger to Reggie’s health would be me.

  I had long grown accustomed to finding him in unusual locations—in linen closets and wardrobes, under cars. He might hear you coming, or look straight at you, eye to eye, when you opened a door, but either way he would disappear, his speed suggesting he couldn’t believe his privacy had been interrupted.

  On this occasion he must have been hanging out in the garage. I pulled my car inside, pressed the button for the door to descend and headed into the house. There was no one else home and it was a good ten minutes before I registered the sound of a meowing cat and at least another sixty seconds before I tracked it down to the garage.

  There, trapped beneath the heavy retractable door, were the back legs and lower body I recognized as belonging to Reggie. This was a time before mandatory childproof automated garage doors, and somehow Reggie must have gone all Indiana Jones on me as the gap into daylight began to narrow, misjudged his window of opportunity, and ended up with the weight of the door crushing his little body into two halves, pinning him to the concrete below.

  How he managed to move his rib cage and vocalize with all that dead weight on top of him I’ll never know, but in that instant I felt what I had seen in the eyes of so many owners who feel directly responsible for their pet’s demise.

  “He slipped his leash. I never even got to call his name before the car hit him.”

  “I just put the car in reverse. How was I to know she was sleeping on the driveway? I never saw a thing. The first thing I knew was when she started screaming.”

  My heart ricocheted inside my chest, panic mingled with guilt as I hit the button and the garage door began to rise. Reggie just lay there, unable to move, responsive to my touch but almost in a state of shock.

  I examined him where he lay. By the looks of things the door had pressed down on him along his spine, behind his chest, crushing his abdomen. His color was good, he was breathing fine, and I could feel his heart racing to catch up with mine. Carefully I palpated his belly. He could easily have ruptured his spleen, lacerated a liver lobe, burst a loop of bowel, but everything felt pretty good, relaxed and nonpainful. Then I discovered a major problem. Reggie’s back legs refused to move, in fact, when I pinched his toes he made no response, no recognition whatsoever of discomfort. Given the location of the direct trauma, there was a good chance that when the door came slamming down, poor Reggie had broken his back.

  Carefully, I got him onto a plywood board and drove in to work, united with all those owners I had known, the ones shaken and devoured by remorse. We are desperate to act, to do something, anything, no matter what the cost, to make the animal’s pain and our own pain go away. My mind was way ahead, thinking about spinal surgery, planning which technique I would use to stabilize the fractured bones. What would I say to Kathy and Whitney? Their indestructible Reggie had come undone on my watch. And now there was a new and ugly truth waving to get my attention—what if, despite your best efforts, this cat never walks again?

  By the time I was taking the X-rays of Reggie’s spine, he was beginning to get upset, releasing a stream of feline obscenities as though he was in significant discomfort.

  “Hang in there, little man,” I said as the film rolled out of the processor.

  Secretly, I often hold my breath when I am viewing an X-ray after a surgical repair, forced to face the black-and-white reality of my work, making sure a fracture is adequately and appropriately secured. This time, I threw in a prayer, hoping, at the very least, it would be something I could attempt to fix.

  As it turned out, it wasn’t. I don’t know how he did it, but you can’t fix what’s not broken. Miraculously, Reggie’s spine remained intact. The meowing, however, continued unabated, and I began to wonder if he was beginning to feel the equivalent of pins and needles as blood started to rush back into numb and lifeless extremities. Could the weight of the wooden door on one side and the unforgiving concrete floor on the other have pinched off the blood supply to his back legs, temporarily causing his paralysis? I supposed it was possible, so I started massaging and bicycling his little feet, much to his displeasure, but over the next hour or so, sensation and movement began returning to his legs.

  That night I was giddy with relief, weak and sentimental, pouring on the affection, offering a consolation supper of milk and a can of tuna by way of an apology. Next time I would be more attentive when closing the garage door. Better still, time to upgrade to some childproof sensors. By the following morning, he seemed completely back to his old self. And the day after that, I was actually pleased to discover a gift on the doormat.

  Though Reggie taught me a valuable, if painful, lesson in sympathy for pet owners burdened with a direct responsibility for their animal’s predicament, his enduring legacy will always be associated with Emily.

  Emily had been a difficult baby—irritable, prone to coughs, colds, ear infections, and colic. Though I am subject to the bias of every proud parent, I would have to describe her as a stunning blue-eyed blonde with perfect rosebud lips and a smile that could make me cry from twenty yards. Yet something about her was clearly not right. How similar are the frustrations and limitations of pediatric and veterinary medicine, the infant and animal trying to communicate in the only way they can—by expressing their suffering.

  I kept coming back to the amniocentesis Kathy had endured during her pregnancy, proof positive that Emily was free and clear of all possible major congenital defects. With these diseases ruled out, what could it possibly be?

  For a long time, asthma was believed to be the culprit. Emily was started on aerosolized medicine to open up her airways and make it easier for her to breathe, but placing a plastic mask over a baby’s face induces a response similar to that of your average cat or dog—screaming, kicking, and fighting. We battled on but the treatment wasn’t helping. All the tests kept coming back negative, but all of us, including the doctors, knew something serious had to be going on.

  Just after Emily’s second birthday she developed a severe, merciless cough. Obtaining a meaningful sputum sample from an infant can be tricky at best, especially in a pediatrician’s office, so when she whooped up a prize specimen on the front of my shirt and I happened to have a sterile kit on hand for taking samples for bacterial culture and antibiotic sensitivity testing, I seized my opportunity. I took my sterile Q-tip, shoved it in the blob, inserted it into the special growth medium, and labeled the sample as belonging to the lungs of one “Reginald C. Cat.” This I submitted to the veterinary laboratory I used for my patients.

  When the results came back, Reggie had grown a weird organism, bacteria never found in the lungs of healthy cats let alone healthy humans, bacteria that could thrive only if a severe abnormality existed in the lungs’ natural ability to clear the airways of mucus and junk.

  “I know this is weird,” I said to our pediatric pulmonologist, handing over a copy of Reggie’s results. “But this is what I grew from Emily’s lungs.”

  From a quagmire of contradictory signs and negative tests, Reggie’s paperwork leapt out at the doctor and pointed her in a highly specific direction. Emily’s lung, sinus, and bowel problems, so debilitating in such a little life, had to be caused by a congenital disorder genetically acquired through her parents’ DNA, an incurable disease called cystic fibrosis.

  “But she’s been tested for CF,” I said. “The test was negative. My wife even had an amniocentesis and cystic fibrosis was one of the things the
y were supposed to rule out.”

  I was reminded that no test is foolproof; there can be false negatives and only common genetic mutations are considered in a test.

  “Have you ever noticed if Emily’s skin tastes particularly salty?”

  She went on to describe how the problem with CF kids lies in an inability to appropriately move salt in and out of the body’s cells. It didn’t sound like much but it was everything, the difference between normal functional airways and airways clogged with lethal, tenacious goop. Perversely, it also drives too much salt out and onto the skin with sweat.

  “What does this all mean? Is she going to die?”

  The pulmonologist did what all good doctors do, she answered directly, with clarity, compassion, and honesty.

  “Currently the average life expectancy for a child with CF is about thirty years. That’s average, which means sometimes more, sometimes less.”

  Kiss the forehead and woe to the child who tastes like salt for he is bewitched and soon must die.

  Emily’s skin was not excessively salty and believe me, I had performed this test from medieval folklore enough times to know. Then again, had Reggie? To my knowledge, Emily had never achieved the ultimate mark of his approval, the lick on the back of the hand that defined entry into his inner circle. Was this because he was tuned in, superior animal senses tasting the salt, an aberration, something not quite right and therefore something from which he should keep away?

  We decided to subject Emily to one more test and waited for the results. In private, I already knew the answer. Though I had not and could not process this answer, why else would I insist the pulmonologist call me on my cell phone with the results? I needed to be the one to break the news to Kathy and when the call eventually came, I was driving home from work. Even before I flipped the phone open I pulled over to the side of the road. Like I said, subconsciously, I already knew. The doctor’s words crawled inside me and as they did, the prospect of seeing my two-year-old daughter lead an average, ordinary life came to an end. Struck hollow and breathless, I felt like I had been told my child had gone missing, left to wonder whether she had simply wandered off or been abducted, never to return.