Don't Ask, Don't Tell

Once a year, I do the unthinkable. I take my cats to the vet.  It’s worse than it sounds.  I don’t have two carriers, so I don’t take them at the same time. Honestly, I don’t think any of us could handle it. They hardly like each other, they can’t stand the car, and they flat out hate the vet. I, on the other hand, adore my vet. He really tries to do his job, as much as the cats fight him, and there is nothing you can’t talk about with him.  And I do mean nothing.

I took Yoko first. She is the alpha cat, and the old lady of the house. At nine years old, she is so waifishly thin that she has surpassed maintaining her girlish figure and gone straight to frail. Yoko hates to get in the cat carrier, so I let her ride in my lap on the way there. I am sure we make for an interesting sight, just a woman tootling down the street in her Volvo SUV with a very angry and thin long haired black cat in her lap. Ain’t nothing dangerous about that at all.

She did fine until the vet walked in the exam room, which is when she turned into the cat from “Pet Cemetery,” all scary hunched and flat ears, fangs exposed and loud hissing. The good news is her teeth were exceptionally clean. She also gained a half a pound. He attempted to finish the exam with Yoko under a towel, but she managed to turn her head three hundred and sixty degrees before biting him. Good thing he had on oven mitts. The bad news is that when she lashed out, she got me right between the thumb and pointer finger. I was the only casualty.

After I got her home, it was time to take the other one. Moshe is younger and much more timid than Yoko. He is twice her size, a good fifteen pounds to her eight. He is also sweet and gentle, but dumb as a sack of hammers. He is the only living creature that I love despite his extreme stupidity. In fact, I love that he is an idiot. On him, it’s endearing, those big vacant eyes just staring at nothing.

Moshe was also scared of the car ride, but not because he remembered where we were going, more because he doesn’t understand what a car is. We got checked in and went back to the exam room. After Yoko’s exam, where I was the only one who got scratched, I decided to leave him in the carrier until the vet entered the room. Moshe stared at me from his carrier, meowing loudly. I, unfortunately, don’t understand meows, although I did get the tone of what he was saying.

The vet came in and checked his cat vitals, weighing him and combing through his fur and looking at his anus and whatnot. He asked me if I had any concerns, and I did. I told him that Moshe has taken to licking his genitals very frequently. I was worried he might be developing cystitis, although the litter box seemed pretty normal as did his eating and drinking.

Cystitis is not unusual in male indoor cats. When I was a kid, we had a cat that developed such severe cystitis that he required surgery. My childhood memory of the event involved the vet doing some major surgery, turning his penis into a cat vagina, or maybe just removing his penis and leaving him totally without male genitalia. I remember it with humor, because when we first got him, we thought he was a girl kitten until he/she had to get fixed, which was when we found out about the whole penis thing. And then, a few years later, no more penis.  I had a transgender cat before transgender cats were a thing.

Are transgender cats a thing?

Also, that operation had to cost a pretty penny. Looking back, I cannot believe my mother would spend any money on the care of a cat. Hell, we went through cats like they were paper plates. And she was tight with money unless she was spending it on herself, so there is no way she coughed up that kind of money to fix a very expendable cat. I have a theory. I think she slept with the vet for surgical favors.

But I digress. I told the vet I was worried about the cat’s constant junk licking. He got the veterinary technician to hold Moshe still, and then got down to table level to try to examine my cat’s penis. Moshe was appalled. He tried to resist this violation of his privacy, but he was no match for the woman holding him still and the veterinarian exposing him. All the while, the vet tried to speak calmly to him. “I know, Mosh, it’s your penis. No one should be licking your penis but you. I get it.”

I was speechless.

After he finished his exam, the vet stood up and said, “We are going to have an uncomfortable conversation now.”

“I thought we already were having one,” I said.

He ignored that and continued. “You might not know this, but some animals masturbate.”

I did know this. My mother in law’s dog used to rub one out with an old Mukluk slipper every chance she got. That damn poodle would slipper scoot across the room for hours. It was the only time she seemed happy. I can’t say I blame her.

He went on. “If a cat licks his penis frequently, we first have to make sure he doesn’t have an infection. You said the litter is normal, and upon examination, his penis looks normal too.”

He stopped talking for a moment and took out a pen and a piece of paper. He began drawing a cat penis for me.

“So a healthy cat penis would look like this, kind of like, well, it comes to a point, you see, sort of pointy. Like a cone, an ice cream cone.”

“No wonder he licks it all the time,” I said. No, I didn’t. I said it in my head.

“If you get really close to it, you will see it has these barbs. That’s perfectly normal for a cat penis.”

“I am not planning on looking closely enough to see barbs. I don’t want to look at it at all,” I said.

“So if it were inflamed or irritated, it would be rounder on the top, like a mushroom.” He drew another cat penis, this time with an inflamed tip. I wanted to knock the pen out of his hand.  “It doesn’t look inflamed though, so that’s a good sign. Which means, well, that he licks his penis because he likes to lick it. If you look on Google for, wait, let me say it differently.”

I laughed, out loud. I actually LOL’ed.

“Don’t go to Google. If you look at the Cornell website, you will see information about animal masturbation. It’s normal for some animals. Just make sure he doesn’t overdo it or it will become irritated. If it gets all swollen, or you know, bulbous on the end. Short of that, though, well, I guess he can have at it.”

Moshe and I were both embarrassed by that visit to the vet, and if you count Yoko too, we all were traumatized. It’s a good thing we only have to go once a year.