It Shouldn’t Happen To A Chef

I’ve been away lately. I haven’t been posting on any of my social media accounts and I’ve been scarcely getting enough time to scratch myself, let alone write! With end-of-year exams over I have 18 months to go before graduation, and only six until final rotations. I was looking forward to working to save some money, reclaiming my social life, and mostly getting stuck in to my writing. But life had other ideas.

Superstitions have a special place in my heart, whether they are veterinary superstitions like the ones featured on VIN recently, or the habit of throwing salt over my left shoulder that I picked up from my great-grandmother. In this case though, it was the rule of threes that led to me working as the sole cook in a busy café with absolutely zero experience. In the space of one week away (for veterinary placement, what else!) from my regular part-time job at a local café two assistant chefs had broken bones. Both breaks had them out of action for at least 6-8 weeks, leaving the head chef to run the kitchen solo. Unfortunately due to health reasons the head chef was forced to stop work the week I returned from placemen, leaving the kitchen 3 chefs down with nobody to man the kitchen besides one of the baristas who was needed for the café’s primary order of business – coffee. Somewhat foolishly, this situation led to me volunteering to ‘give it a crack’…

For those of you used to working in a vet clinic, working in a kitchen would be an excellent experience. There are more similarities than you may realise…

The Runaway Heifer

When people first said ‘you should put your body on the line for your job’, they most certainly had vets in mind!

My morning of preg-testing, while incredibly exciting in and of itself, gave me more excitement than I had expected thanks to one escaping cow.

The incident occurred while preg-testing my grandparents’ cows (which are lowlines – basically an Angus but a lot smaller). The experience was exciting enough as it was, as it was the first time I had preg-tested a lot of animals with real management decisions resting on my abilities.

Unfortunately some heifers (young cows) had broken into the paddock the breeding females were in so we had to draft them out, an easy enough task. Usually!

This photo is of some of the cows from a different day – this story is set firmly in overalls-and-gumboots territory

Vet Student Catches Cat

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.