This is a story of my first ‘oh my gosh I am going to be a vet’ moment. It happened years ago, back when I was only a term into my vet degree.
I was home for a weekend visiting my family. Partly because they were missing me (I had moved away from home to attend vet school), but mostly because I was already sick of dining hall food; and BOY can my parents cook!
The horrible state of mass-produced food for teenagers aside – I had decided I would spend some quality time with my sisters while I was home by taking them bowling. It’s a strange feeling having to arrange ‘quality time’ with people that you have spent, quite literally, an entire lifetime growing up with. But mature Zachary was going to do things right! Keeping with my new-found mature nature I had decided I would call my mother after bowling to see if I had to pick anything up from the shops; and this is how we get to a situation involving two cats, a lady with ailurophobia (a fear of cats), and one very clumsy, and now embarrassed, cat owner.
Walking into the supermarket my sisters and I passed a lady carrying two cat carry cases, and naturally didn’t pay her that much attention. That was until we were walking through the entrance and our attention was caught by a bolt of brown stripey fur flying across our path into the trolley stack. We turned around to the cry of “Come back Henry!” and saw that the door of one of the cat baskets had flung open. The obviously distressed lady then proceeded to drop both cages, the force from dropping the cages then caused the door of the second cage to pop right off!
Luckily, my quarter-year of vet school had adequately prepared me for such a disaster and I instilled calm into the surrounding customers… YEAH RIGHT!
The second cat ran directly in to one of the checkout stations, at which point the check-out lady managed to stand on top of her register. She moved too quickly for me to see and I still to this day maintain that she developed wings for a split second! Thankfully her actions scared the cat away and she joined her friend underneath the rows of trolleys in the trolley rack at the front of the store.
Now that everybody in the vicinity was aware of the situation (thanks to the phenomenal feats of the check-out-chick and her accompanying squeal) I had to act quickly. I tried to calm people down by announcing “It’s ok, I’m a vet student. I can deal with cats.” These were true statements; I was just skipping over the minor details of the term of classes and 2 hour cat handling prac the week before which substantiated the claims…
“Now, if you could just stand on that side of the trolley racks,” I directed a spectator with my apparent authority in the situation “and wave your arms and stop the cats from running out that side.”
I then proceeded to approach the cats from the other side of the trolley racks, moving each row of trolleys back as I approached the cats, with a very helpful stranger helping to move them out of the way.
Eventually I reached the row that the cats had settled under. The whole ordeal had had a petrifying effect on the tom and queen and they looked up at me as if they were roos in the headlights (translate this with deer if you need to). This meant I only had to bend down and pick them both up by their scruffs and return them to the cages from whence they came.
The owner then took them and, without saying a word to anyone left the shopping centre at a jog… though thankfully not one fast enough to dislodge the cage doors again!
After thanking the strangers who helped me (seeing as the owner couldn’t do it on account of her disappearing) my sisters wasted no time in pointing out the ridiculousness of the situation. “Watch out, Zach’s a vet student” became a running joke for the rest of the time I was home!
Seeing Practice 