Juicebox Hero: Me and Billie do some healing.

Last week, I reached down to pet my cat Billie and discovered a big-ish lump on her shoulder. Being the responsible-bordering-on-obsessed kitty parents that we are, we called the vet on the same day. Dr. Duffus (pronounced like Homer Simpson's favorite beer: Duff-us, NOT like this: Doof-us) told us to bring her on in. About 3 minutes later, we were contemplating $600 surgery and what can you do? The lump was likely to keep on growing.

So Dr. Duffus cut her open, took out the lump and stitched her back together. I was shocked at the size of the cut - about two inches long. To keep her from scratching the wound with her hind legs, they told us to either put a tube sock or a baby t-shirt on her. The fucking tube sock was a disaster. We got it on her, but it seemed so tight and looked terribly uncomfortable. Billie howled, growled and shrieked as she lurched around the apartment, still drunk from the anesthesia. Our other cat Sheldon howled and shrieked along with her. I cried a little. The sock kept rolling back over her shoulder, exposing the stitches and rendering the whole exercise useless, so we cut the damn thing off of her again. The baby t-shirt works much better, but Billie hates it. From Craig's recent online forum entry: "She hates this shirt, though we haven't established yet if she hates it because she can't scratch or because of the lavendar and the pleated sleeves, or because of the stupid baby saying on the front. " The stupid baby saying? 'My Daddy knows a lot, but my Mommy knows EVERYTHING!' Heh heh heh.

For this, I will poop in your shoes and drink out of your water glass when you're not looking. Oh wait, I do that already.

She slinks around the apartment like she's subjected to regular whippings, but the wound is healing nicely, so she's going to have to live with it. I was home sick for a couple of days and we convalesced on the couch together for many, many hours: