The veterinarian examined my twelve-year-old cat Tiny Puss thoroughly before finally removing his stethoscope and pronouncing that she was “psychologically distressed.”
As it turns out, the problem was largely physical. The “distression” was caused by troublesome teeth. The vet handed me a brochure that outlined, in great detail, exactly how to brush her teeth every day.
“Have you been sniffing too much flea dip?” I snorted. “I can’t brush my cat’s teeth.”
“You have to,” he said. A few minutes later, I was thanking him for a helpful how-to brochure, which in retrospect is a little like the guy in the electric chair saying “thanky” to whoever’s stepping up to throw the switch.
When Tiny Puss and I returned home, I read the brochure aloud so she’d have some sense of what was coming. She didn’t seem interested and sat on her favorite pillow—mine—and watched Wimbledon on TV.
“It says here, Tiny Puss, that for optimum effectiveness I should brush your teeth daily,” I began. She yawned widely, revealing her few remaining teeth.
The more I read, the more I realized that whoever wrote the brochure had (a) never even seen a cat, and (b) was crazy in the head.
The first instruction was to “brush your pet’s teeth at a time when you are both relaxed.”
What am I supposed to do? Mix us a pitcher of margaritas? I can’t really envision Tiny Puss squeezing the lime and licking the salt off her paw. But then again…maybe the only way this would work was to get her drunk.
I continued reading aloud:
“Start by handling your pet’s mouth for several minutes a day.”
Right. There’s nothing I’d rather do than massage the inflamed gums of a testy senior citizen cat with claws as sharp as the point on Jesse Ventura’s head.
Next, I would “gently hold the mouth closed with one hand, lift the lip on one side of the mouth and brush the outside of the teeth in a circular motion UNTIL YOUR PET ACCEPTS THE ROUTINE WILLINGLY.”
The next stop sounded like litter boxes of fun: “Clean the inside surfaces of the teeth by placing your hand over the nose and mouth area, gently squeezing and pushing the lips on one side between the back teeth. At the same time, pull the head back firmly but gently and brush the inside of the teeth on the opposite side.”
The instructions assumed the average pet owner possessed twenty-eight pairs of hands because that’s precisely how many it would take to subdue a cat during all this pushing and squeezing.
The brochure continued, “The whole process should take only a minute or two.” There was a final caveat: “If your pet is a struggler, restrain by wrapping in a large bath towel with just the head protruding, keeping a safe distance.”
Absolutely. I’m thinking Jersey.