HAVE I EVER TOLD YOU? THE CAT EXORCISM

     Have I ever told you about us trying to exorcise our cats? I haven't? W-e-e-ll, here it is...
     It happens in a life of every pet that they get a flea or two. Or a thousand. After the kittens that we fostered left, we had to contend with the fleas. I wrote all about it in one of my posts. The poor cats suffered most of all. We tried one remedy after another, but nothing worked, until either the flea season ended or Taka's home-made brew of lemon peals defeated the hoard's attack on our household. The only one who didn't feel the flea bites was my dad. He sat in his tiny room, watched TV and happily avoided the onslaught of tiny blood suckers. But that's besides the point...
     The cats suffered the most. They tried to bite the fleas out, but, as we found out later, the fleas themselves also have  parasites. The eggs hatched inside my poor beasts and became little white worms. The moment that I saw them on Sylvie's and Chickys behinds, that's when I made an appointment with a vet.
     The vet's advice was simple: give cats the worm pills. Unfortunately, those pills are impossible to get into a cat. Fortunately, Hanah is a good planner.
     We put a harness leash on Chicky first. The end of the leash went under a leg of a chair and I went on the chair. No matter, how much he wanted to get away, now he couldn't. Did you ever try to forcefully open a cat's mouth ? Yeah, it's impossible! I even managed to stick a pill through the side of cat's mouth, but he bit me with his needle like teeth and spat the meds out. OK, it was the time to think outside the box. I crashed a pill in a spoon, added some milk to it and we poured as much of that stuff into Chicky as we could. Even though he spat and drooled, Hanah just smudged whatever came out of his mouth over his chest and legs. Good thinking: now, when Chicky cleans himself, he'll swallow the rest of the medicine.
     Success! But in our souls we were trembling in fear: it was Sylvie's turn.

     Catching her and putting on the harness went with the minimum blood loss on our part. Sylvie cowered on the floor, but there was no escape. Why we didn't just pour the crushed meds dissolved in milk on her, I don't know. Maybe, we are masochists!
     We had to dose the spitting and snarling cat with the medicine. She writhed on the floor, making the noises that sounded something in between a pig getting slaughtered and a panther defending her cub. Cats have this incredible mechanism of starting to foam at the mouth, when they ingest something of a poisonous nature. Chicky just sat there, with his ears drooping, and quietly and miserably dripping drools that went a-a-all the way from his mouth to the floor.
     Sylvie looked like she was possessed by Satan! The foam covered her whole face and she was writhing on the floor so violently, that the foam flew around her and landed on us and everywhere. I was scared. Hanah kept her cool. She undid the harness and Sylvie slinked away to lick herself all over. In a few hours of sleep she seemed to forget all about the unpleasantness that we inflicted on her. We, on the other hand, still can't forget the cat exorcism and cringe every time they look like there might be something biting them. I don't think I have it in me to go through it again!