No Need for Introductions

For those that don't know me, I'm Sir Cornelius, the Watchful Eye, the greeter to furry guests and their two legged friends of Southern Hills Animal Hospital in Roanoke, VA. Although I spend a lot of my time sleeping somewhere I shouldn't be, eating a plant, or chasing a bug, I do pick up on a lot that goes on in the world of animal care and medicine.

Around this time I do enjoy seeing all the tiny tots wagging their tails and purring in carriers on their first trip to the vet's office, before they know what's about to happen to them. Your clawed and pawed pal is about to experience the first of many visits where someone in a white coat with a weird necklace pokes and prods them all over and usually sticks them with something sharp. As much as it physically pains me to admit this, these annoying annual acts of torture actually keep me feeling great the other 364 days of the year, not to mention all the love and treats afterwards to make up for the emotional scarring.

All day long, or the cumulative 5 hours I'm not napping or knocking something off a desk, I hear the cranberry clad crew speak to the critter chauffeurs about "vaccines" and prevention," It's enough to drive anything with ears, even if they are mildly deformed, insane. But at the end of the day, I suppose they do have a point. You wouldn't know it by my appearance, but I have definitely seen my fair share of peers that did not take that scary man or woman in the white coat's advice when it comes to these infuriating chores of getting stuck at least once a year or applying some smelly oil that completely ruins the glossy look to my fur or making me take some nasty treat every month.

I digress.

The point is, and I've never been one for making points, what's one day of utter annoyance compared to days if not weeks of complete agony, not to mention the looks of shame from your person when they have that argument inside their head of whether or not you're worth all this trouble and money. After all the head shakes, sighs, and transactions, you're finally taken back to your own territory, an environment where your owner vows to never miss a vaccine, or not buy prevention. The reasons are in the names, vaccinate us against the nastiness that can be found anywhere, prevent me from housing creatures smaller and more annoying than myself on my worst day. So why not skip that extra step of having to either leave us at some strange place that smells just a little too clean or constantly tricking us into cars that we all know are going back to "that place" by being proactive?

Just some thoughts from your usually friendly, neighborhood, one-eyed, crinkled eared feline

-C

"Now going paperless!"