The Friday ramble.

[mad_andy]

OK, so everything aches. That, my friends, is because I have just completed a ten hour shift then walked home. I was on ops, which is a good thing, but that means I was on my feet the whole time. My knees and back are killing me, as is my left shoulder which I strained lifting fat stupid little dogs in and out of kennels.

Today I have wrestled: a stupid Westie that wouldn't let us look in its ear, a Ridgeback paranoid about its ears being touched, another Ridgeback that was just fucking paranoid, several evil cats and a feisty rat.

My elbows hurt from being slammed into things when wrestling dogs. And when I say wrestling, I mean it. For the big dogs it was on the floor, three-falls-submission-or-a-knockout stuff; if they're in to have stuff done, and you can't persuade them gently then they have to be forced to accept what you want to do. Sounds brutal?

Can be.

No violence is used, as in hitting - but yeah, you physically hold the animal down so the vet can do what they need to.

Yes, you can sedate them.

Which, of course, means pinning them down for the injection of the agent...

It's a no-win situation for all concerned. (So please, if you have a dog, do train it to let itself be handled, OK? Fucking Westies. Hate the pallid little bastards.)

Speaking of which, here's why else I'm feeling rather pissy.

I'm due to go off shift, and the new locum vet C__ emerges from her room carrying a box. I may have posted before about a certain reluctance to simply open a box shoved at me, but in this case I was fucking right.

"What you got there?"

"A rat."

She's making no move to open the box. In fact, she's standing back from it with her hands folded against her chest. (She's from NZ, a nice girl. We've been getting along great so far, but still. New vet, don't trust it yet. Even if she is very pretty and looks about twelve. Damn her.)

"And...?"

"It bites. The owners won't handle it."

Lovely. rats have long teeth and believe me, they are smart. They will very soon learn that if they bite they get let go and can then run around to do as they damn well please - plus, the less you handle them the less they're used to it, so it's more stressful for them.

OK. No worries. I used to keep and breed rats, taken in my share of unwanted, nervous rescues so no problem.

"You want me to get it out for you?"

She pulls a horrified face. "I hate rats!"

OK, my sympathy rating just fell through the motherfucking floor. You're a vet. Whatever walks through that consulting room door gets the same amount of care and attention and I don't give a fuck what it is. You put aside your personal feelings and you fucking deal.

Right. So I open the box and get the rat out. (Let her smell my hand, seize gently but firmly by the base of the tail, lift her out, put her on rubber topped table, pull gently backwards. She grips the table with all four feet, I put the other hand - bearing a tea towel - over her, which covers her up and lets me hold her around the body. Stop the pressure backwards, and keeping hold of tail base lift rat until vet can see the underside, where the problem is.)

This took about five seconds.

C__ looks at me. I look back.

The rat is relaxed, if a bit confused. The lump underneath is clearly visible, and I'm expecting her to examine it. That being her fucking job, after all.

She darts in, examines, figures out what it is. Not rocket science. Decides to go check practice policy on things ratty. Meanwhile, I settle the rat against my chest, keeping her supported in the towel and hanging on to the tail base in case she jumps. Rat has now relaxed, and is looking around her, nice and calm.

Bites, my ass.

Incidentally? They would have been in trouble had I not been there - because the other two nurses on duty are also scared of rats, and get all girly and squealy when presented with them.

Rat back in box, owners given options.

Ten minutes later, box is back.

Would I put the rat to sleep?

Nobody else wants to do it, you see. Nobody else wants to touch her.

So I did. She never felt a thing.

I curled her up, wrapped her in paper and made her look tidy before putting her in cold storage with the other furries. I gave a shit, mate, even if nobody else did. Safe journey, little rat.

*Shakes self*

This week has been a time of opposites at work. Best and worse of human nature.

On Monday, a lady brought in a box containing a mother cat - no more than eight months old herself - and two kittens, about two weeks old. That had been left in a box next to her bin.

This lady couldn't keep them, but wanted them to be safe and find homes. She offered to help pay for any treatment.

Mum and kittens have now gone to a foster home to await rehoming. Mum is a fabulous little black cat, sort of semi long haired; both kittens are black. All fat and healthy, so somebody has cared for this cat - and then decided to dump her rather than find homes for the kittens and pay for her to be spayed.

A male black cat, also dumped in somebody's garden when he was a few months old was also in. The lady who's garden he was in has spent several months befriending him, and persuaded him into a box. Again, she couldn't keep him, but wanted him to be safe. Paid for his care and board and castration - for nothing more than the satisfaction of knowing he'd be found a new home.

Yesterday rolls around. A box (*groan*) is thrust at us by an almost hysterical woman.

In said box is a very battered, shocked and bleeding - you guessed it - little black cat. He was hit by a car on a busy road, and a driver of an articulated lorry saw it happen.

He then turned his lorry around, and went to see if he could help. Stopped the traffic with said lorry to get the cat off the road.

Another woman stopped, and said she'd take the cat to us. He left some money, and his phone number so we could let him know how the cat was doing. She brought the cat to us, offered to chip in for his care, and has spent the last two evenings knocking on doors in the area to see if anyone has lost a little black cat, male, about eight months old, entire.

People like that kind of give you hope.

The little cat (no name as per yet, I nixed the idea of calling him Lucky) has been somebody's pet; he's friendly, fit, healthy, cared for and a good weight.

But nobody is looking for him.

We've fixed his leg, and if nobody comes forward for him before he's ready to leave us then he'll go off to be fostered by the local branch of Cats Protection - who do a bloody marvellous job with us. We work with them a lot. Two hours we worked on him today, pinning and wiring his leg - he's had fluids, 24 hour care, been treated exactly the same as anyone's pet would be. Thank God for my boss, who won't accept anything less.

In a lot of surgeries, he'd be dead by now....

Trust me, if I didn't already have a full quota of cats there would have been a couple more here by the end of this week.

In other news, Axl has sliced his foot open and had it stitched. He is now wearing a bucket on his head and is the most miserable lurcher alive. Can't go out for walks until it heals, bashing into the furniture, bollocked for trying to chew his stitches...poor little bastard is in Hell and it is, of course, all my fault. Or so he tells me with his big brown eyes whenever he looks at me.

So, I ache. I smell of pee (which is pretty much my default state in this line of work). I'm covered in spots and patches of blood, and has anybody thanked me today?

Ha.

Still. Slay's away till sunday, which is good. However, silicondreams is as well which has fucked what little positivity I'd managed to gather around myself.

So if you'll excuse me, I'm going to fling myself into editing and sulk.

Although! I almost forgot. Monday is my birthday. I'll be thirty five. Please excuse me while I go and slit my fucking throat.

I hate birthdays.