At 6:30 yesterday morning, I packed Jackie-O into a carrier, wedged it into the passenger seat, and drove her back to Charles County, MD, where her hernia had been overlooked during her spay operation last week. She squawked bitterly the whole way, maybe due to déjà vu or maybe because she was being separated from her new best friend Clinton.

The drive only took an hour, so I let her ramble around inside the car for fifteen minutes when we arrived, and that took her mind off her misfortunes. When the staff showed up, I stuffed her back in the carrier and ushered her in. They apologized for overlooking her hernia, agreed to do her surgery first (the doctor handles over 20 spays/neuters on a typical day), and told me to come back for her at 1pm.

I came back at 12:30 and they said she was still sedated and needed another half hour. By 1:15 we were driving home in a light rain and Jackie-O was flippering around in her carrier like a drunken seal. Halfway home she started squawking. Then she keeled over and I momentarily thought she was dead.

At 50K, I put her carrier back in our exercise room. She roused herself, greeted Clinton, and keeled over again. When we let her out a few hours later, she was ravenous, staggering over to the tray for both wet and dry food. And she was clearly happy to be back with Clinton, even though she kept tipping over when he got near.

By 10pm she'd had several snacks and seemed more coordinated, though still unable to defend herself when Clinton wanted to wrestle. We set up a crate+carrier condo with litter, food and water, and locked her in for the night. This morning she was fine, so she's back with her orange purrball. Woohoo!

Martha reminded me that we had a few unpublished pix in our backup camera, some of which were shot during our pre-spay/neuter slumber party last Weds night. While Clinton was triggering fireworks in the villa (before we relocated him to the exercise room), Minnie's sister Daisy and nephew Oreo (the only kitten from Daisy's litter who has yet to find a home) spent a quiet night in the nursery. They recovered quickly enough from surgery to attend an adoption event two days later.

And presiding over the playground upstairs, unconcerned with the peregrinations of kittens and moms outside her domain, our diva Margo celebrated her five-month anniversary with us, making her one-feline show The Divine Miss M the longest-running performance in 50K history.

filed by: TS