One thing I've been putting off for a long time is a veterinarian check-up for my cat Leo. Now this isn't due to not caring or a lack of love. It is actually the opposite. Leo is a very scared and fragile cat. It took us close two a year to assimilate with him. Even now almost two and a half years later we're still in that process.
He's very scared of any other people than me and my girlfriend, although he has been slowly getting better. He might show himself if we have one single visitor. He'll flinch at any kind of unknown sound. If the door bell rings he becomes a shell of himself, ears down, eyes big, tummy to the ground and fastest way to his hiding spot under the bed.
We've had to take him to the vet before and it's always a huge process to get him in his travel cage. We try to have the travel cage around with his blankets and candy inside to make it a positive thing but that just doesn't work. If we try to lift him, he'll run. If we come towards him with the cage, he'll run. If we push him to hard he'll hiss and attack. He just doesn't like these things which is fine. He likes the comfort of a calm and stable life.
The reason I've been dreading this day has been this whole process of getting him in the cage. The only way we've managed to do it so far is to corner him and put the cage in front of him so that he feels like it's the safest place to go. In this process we'll have to be chasing him around the apartment for a while. He looks so scared and betrayed. It's really heartbreaking and I hate it to all hells. When we did this around the time we got him we would have to spend days building up that trust again.
It was the same this time. Those cries of betrayal just cuts so deep in me. We eventually got him in there and put a blanket over the cage to hopefully calm him. We put some candies in there but they were ignored. This is the cat who will normally spend hours trying to open the candy bag for himself. There's been so many mornings where I've found the candy pack pushed into a corner of the room full of claw and bite marks.
The vet isn't far off. We need to take the bus for three stops then walk about 500 meters. What sucks is that the bus makes a lot of noise and the walk is a long a fairly trafficked road. He was meowing and screaming on the bus but luckily he calmed down as we got off. He probably didn't like the shaking and the sounds of the bus.
When we arrived we were let in to the vet immediately. I was really nervous as to how this would go. At earlier vet visits he's been given sedatives because he's been so wild. To my big surprise he was all calm when the vet took off the lid of his cage. He looked more curious than scared which was all new to me. The vet got to check his teeth, ears, tummy and everything without him making as much as a sound. Even the vaccine needle didn't make him flinch. I was in awe.
Apart from some inflammation in his gums, some tartar on his teeth and one loose tooth he was in perfect health. He weighs 5,6kg which is normal weight for a castrated male cat. We've been worried he's been a little overweight but apparently it's perfectly normal for castrated males to have a little more fat. We have an appointment in September to get that loose tooth removed and his teeth cleaned for tartar. He won't like it but it's for his own good. Luckily he won't be in any pain until then.
When we got home we were expecting him to be mad scared for a while. Instead he just hid under the bed for about half an hour before emerging as his normal self. That was very reassuring as we were expecting him to be a wreck for days.
Maybe our lil' man is starting to come out of his shell a little bit. Now that Covid is starting to settle down we can start having visitors again so that he can get used to other people as well. That's the next step in this lil' guys progressions to becoming a "normal" cat.