A visit to the Vet . . .

I thought that some of my cat problems might be solved yesterday. I was on the telephone, calling a neighbor to ask about what to do with my sick sheep, when the cat came in and ate some sweetened, poisoned, grain that I put out last winter to kill the mice. I didn't see her for most of the day and so I was gleefully thinking that perhaps her corpse was starting to rot in the barn, and that her annoying habits -- rubbing her body around my ankles, begging me to feed her when I had better things to do, pooping in beds, having two litters of kittens in less than twelve months -- wouldn't be annoying me any longer. With the human-friendly Alpha-Cat out of the picture, the other 100 cats would become feral and leave me alone while they kept the farm free of mice.

But as my neighbor predicted when I told him she ate the poison, "She's not going to die. You know cats have nine lives," I laughed thinking how silly that superstition was. Sure enough, more than twelve hours after she ingested the poision, she was still up and running around.

My conscience is starting to bother me though, because after the bee infestation in the house, I worry that my evil thoughts regarding the cat will turn the cat problem into something much more menacing, much more Stephen Kingish, as I'm wishing that this perfectly nice cat, who is simply trying to build a bridge to the human world, would croak and leave me alone.

Yesterday, I consulted several neighbors regarding my sick sheep. She has diarrhea and won't eat. However, none of them have sheep, and so the only advice they had for me was to go the veterinarian. But, stubborn American that I am, I went to the farmer's cooperative thinking that they carried medicine for animals and would advise me on the best course of action. I have a book, in French, on how to care for sheep, but they didn't mention what to specifically do to treat diarrhea. They just tell you about how to prevent diarrhea, and unfortunately for the sheep, I hadn't bothered to read that chapter.

Sheep are very delicate animals, unlike cats who have nine lives, sheep possess, on average, a quarter of a life. An old sheep farmer in Montana, who died last year, told me that from the moment a sheep is born it is just looking for a way to die. That was his down-home way of saying that sheep are a pain in the ass. In the same vein of conventional wisdom, I was surfing the web looking for sheep remedies when I came across this article entitled, "A Sick Sheep is Not Always a Dead Sheep." That was comforting.

So yesterday I found myself in the ironic position of rooting for the cat to die a horrible death by poison, and working frantically all morning to save my beloved, smelly sheep. My son and I had sheared the healthy sheep a few days ago. We had a rollicking, hysterical, yet difficult time as we wrestled the sheep down, and then chopped off her wool with a hand scissors. I have a photo of Preston on the ground, on his back, holding the sheep with his arms encircling her fat belly, her legs sticking akwardly out in all directions. I told him that if he does anything to displease me I'm going to whip out the photo and show it to whoever his current girlfriend happens to be. The photo will be quite the embarassment for him as it looks like he's perhaps, well . . . if you saw Woody Allen's movie, "Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid To Ask," you'll know what I'm hinting at.

Anyway, the healthy sheep is shorn, admittedly not very smoothly, looking something like a cubist painting with many right angles cut into her wool, so if she would have been the one to get the diarrhea, it wouldn't have been quite as disgusting. The one who has the diarrhea isn't sheared, and so she has a poopy mess clinging to her backside attracting flies, which is another horrid problem according to my sheep book having something to do with maggots. But Preston is in Toulouse until Friday evening, and so I can't cut the sheep's wool for another two days. And oh, what a joy that will be.

I thought I'd have this glamorous life living in France, but the dominant theme that is running through my life, at least this week, seems to be merde. I set off for the farmer's cooperative. The clerk there always gets a chuckle out of having me show up. The americaine who owns two sheep. I love going to the cooperative because I get to see the real rural France, the old and the young farmers who joke about their difficult lives, yet seem to be the most genuinely happy people I have ever met.

Yesterday, there was an ancient couple there, they were in their nineties, or possibly they had both passed the century mark, this being the home of the French Paradox. The woman had her silver hair pulled back in a girlish ponytail, her face looked like a dark brown highway map of France, she was wearing a dirty blue house dress accessoried with dark socks and some espadrilles. Her husband looked as if he had been sent from Central Casting to fill the part of "French shepherd." He wore a black beret, had on a pair of pants that were several sizes too big cinched with a thin belt, and he had a cataract covering one eye so that when he looked at you, your first thought was of the Hunchback of Notre Dame. These are the people who are disappearing from France, and these are the people that I adore . . . this link to the ancient country way of living. The scene was ruined when instead of loading their lamb granules into a horse-drawn wagon, they shoved the bags into the back of one of those new electric cars.

My friend Therese showed up just as the old couple was pulling out. Therese backed her car towards the passenger side of the old couple's car as she angled for an advantageous position from which to load her car with chicken feed. The old woman started having a fit, thinking that Therese was going to smash into her. So she got out and was ranting at Therese. But being a French woman, she was quiet in her ranting, and so Therese couldn't hear her ranting. I pointed out the fuming old woman to Therese who was perplexed at the woman's complaining, laughed, and kissed me hello. The old man backed his car out, with great difficulty, it seemed he wasn't used to driving a car, as he wife directed his confused manuveures.

I told Therese my woes regarding the sick sheep. Both Therese and the clerk both said that I needed to go to the veterinairain. I kissed Therese good-bye and headed off towards Prayssac.

When I arrived at the vet's, he was outside with an old, handsome sheep farmer. The two of them were examining a ewe with a large milk bag, who was closely shorn and very, very clean. I didn't know that it was possible for a sheep, not a show sheep, to be so clean. I worried that if I had to haul my sheep in to see the vet, which would be very difficult for me to do in the brand new Peugeot 307, I would be embarassed that my sheep was dirty and smelly and very poopy.

I watched them, and when they were finished, they said Bonjour Madame to acknowledge me, and we went inside to wait for the vet, who was a nerdy-good-looking guy, (maybe I've been here too long without my husband if I'm starting to think that old sheep farmers and nerdy vets, wearing used rectal exam gloves, are attractive)to bring out the medicine for the sick ewe. I asked the sheep farmer what was wrong with his sheep and he said she wasn't eating. I said I had the same problem with my sheep, but that mine had diarrhea. I proudly felt like a old-native myself, being able to talk shop with the locals.

While the doctor was in his storeroom, many women with many dogs started arriving. And virtually all of the dogs seemed to be new mothers as they had very distended breasts. This reminded me that I should ask about the birth-control pill for my cat as suggested by my neighbor Madame Dupuis.

The receptionist handed me a small box. I read the box and was intrigued to discover that I can induce abortions if I feed the cat one pill a day for twelve days after I hear the blood-curdling sex screaming. Now that's a technology I can embrace. Curiously if you want to solve your cat's problems with nymphomanie you can give it one pill a day. I wonder if I can also put it in the cereal of eighteen-year-old boy? Hmmmmmmm.

The doctor finally saw me, heard the word diarrhee and said he didn't need to see the sheep (thank goodness). He gave me some sulphur-based powder that one mixes with water and then administers to the sheep by sticking a large syringe down the sheep's throat.

I raced home. Wrestled the syringe into the sheep's throat, and thought that all my old bartending jokes about sheep, sheepherders, and oral sex probably had a long tradition of fact behind them. The young sheep has a few small teeth, no sharp incisors, and was somewhat complacent after I had shoved the rather fat syringe down her throat.

Amazingly, the sheep did seem a bit perker later in the afternoon when I had to wrestle her again for her second dosage.

I told myself I'd start running again this morning, but am a bit worried about it. I have to go out and dose the sheep again, I'll smell like mutton, and I'll probably have all the stray dogs chasing me down as I run, and there are a lot of dogs running loose here. Wish me luck.