Chapter 10 #2
Tearfully, I bring my Top Cat /Whiska back to the car and tell him that he’s not an asshole. I’m the asshole, as I don’t know what in the hell I’m doing. At least I seem to have found a good vet group.
Panicked, I rush into the grocery store and frantically and frenetically load up on booze and possible staples.
Mostly scalloped potatoes and creamed spinach, and I must look like a lunatic as I zip through the aisles, leaning against the cart with my seemingly thousand-pound cast arm plunging me forward as I just randomly grab anything that looks vaguely appealing and like something I might cook with my limited mobility.
Not that I cooked much before I shattered my arm, but I’m determined not to survive on processed junk.
Well, theoretically. But I might have to shed my food morals. My future is microwavable crap.
Trying to pick up stuff from higher shelves somehow hurts my whole body, and I’m so thankful when a few employees help me finish loading up my cart.
After I pay, they even wheel my bags out to the car.
Because there’s a scared baby in the way back, all the groceries go into the back seat.
My itty-bitty, captured kitty does not try to kill me when I give him some water and what is surely his first can of wet food.
In fact, he scarfs it down and is practically done before the trunk is shut.
Oh, hell. What if he has to pee while on the road? I should have asked the vet.
Unsure what to do, I just shove a random old sweatshirt from my back seat in with him as I scrunch him back into his small carrier. I am the worst pet parent ever.
After we’re back on the road, I muse out loud. “Clearly, SVU is too violent and too much of a disturbing show for someone as young as you. Maybe we blend the names into Top Cat Whiska Hargitay. You’ll have a middle name. Pretty cool, huh?”
He does actually respond with a neutral sound, so maybe I’m onto something.
“I’m not drunk,” I assure him. “I would never drive you around after even a glass of anything. Promise, Whiska.”
He doesn’t respond.
I try again. “Top Cat Whiska Hargitay?”
He then actually makes a positive noise that I can’t identify. Not a meow, not a growl, nor a hiss. Some kind of cat speak that I’ll maybe figure out later. For now? I’ll take whatever approval he’ll throw my way.
“There we go. Consider that your naming ceremony,” I say as we forge ahead into my crazy, ill-thought-out, unknown drive.
I find the animal clinic that Dr. G sent me to.
And Whiska, in his sad and drugged state, is now more easily assessed.
Dr. Z is the new Dr. G., and she is equally kind.
My Top Cat consents to give blood, allows vaccines, and such, and maybe he doesn’t hate me when I set him back into the car.
He looks so pathetically doped up, and the snuggly blanket that I set next to him doesn’t elicit any kind of snuggly response. Not that I really expected it to.
When I arrive in the actual town just twenty minutes later, I can see that it’s not as desolate or abandoned as I feared. It’s just not full of major stores. Lots of small shops and restaurants, and there’s surely some cute bustling area by the docks and the boats.
Dave’s address sends me through many winding roads, finally landing me at a quintessential wood cabin.
Everything you’d think of when you picture a cabin in the middle of nowhere.
A miserable, bumpy road that leads to a place with dark wood siding, a small front porch, and no key needed to enter a place shrouded in overgrown trees.
There’s a chance I won’t get slaughtered on my way in, but Dave knows all about the SVU danger stuff, so I’ll probably be okay.
I grab my drugged cat and sling his carrier over my arm and tentatively walk inside.
It’s all birch walls, unique tiles, wide-plank pine flooring, which is not what I was expecting.
So light and bright, and I smile. Who knew New Friend Dave had such style?
There’s a small but high-end kitchen with a beautiful multi-burner stove and double oven, and I immediately want to bake a million things, even though I don’t know how to bake anything.
When I turn, I take a few steps and about melt into the sunken living room, with its tasteful neutral seating, a fireplace with big concrete-like tiles that run to the ceiling, and a rustic floating wood mantel.
I wander for a second and find that the sliding doors off the living room open to reveal a deck that wraps around to give a full ocean view. It’s absolutely stunning.
Whiska wiggles around in his bag, and I worry the drugs are wearing off, so I carry him into what seems to be the main bedroom and en suite.
I plop the carrier onto the bed and set up his basics around the cabin: litter, food, water, and some weird plastic coils that people at the pet place said he’d love.
I’ll assemble the more complicated robot litter box tomorrow.
Despite knowing it’s overkill and probably not going to make this cat like me more, I still bring in the various beds I got for him and scatter them about, putting one boxy, padded house thing in the bathroom.
Two seconds after I open his carrier, my Top Cat launches himself into that bathroom house—an apparent place of security. He turns and glares at me, fully pissed, and hides.
It’s my instinct to reach out and give him some love, but one stretch of my hand incites a swift reaction. Whiska swipes with pretty shocking strength and leaves my hand aching and bloodied. And my heart sad. This Top Cat hates me—that’s undeniable.
I’m hoping his blood work comes back normal.