Impending Plan to Kick Glen Frey in his Junk.

Lordy mercy.

The vet wasn't kidding when he said Avie might take three weeks to come out of heat. If anything, he was underestimating the situation. In the past four weeks, this cat has gone into heat THREE TIMES--that's three, count `em, three separate four day sessions of the loudest, most painful-sounding caterwauling you'd ever love to avoid hearing, broken up by three days of relative silence in between. I don't remember Winston EVER being this bad.

After the second heat-session began, the wife asked if I'd made the appointment yet to get her fixed.

"No, not yet," I said, then noting that the vet had suggested we wait the full three weeks before doing so.

"Make. The. Appointment."

So I did. In fact, the appointment was scheduled to have taken place this morning at 8:30, but because the cat went into heat again five days ago and has not yet come out of it we've had to reschedule. Actually, let me rephrase that, because the conversation that actually took place when I phoned the vet's office yesterday to ask them what we needed to do went something like this...

ME-- Hey, my cat is scheduled to be spayed tomorrow morning, but she's gone back into heat. What do we need to do?

VET PHONE ANSWERING PERSON-- Oh, that's okay. They can spay her even if she's in heat, it just costs a little more.

What? WHAT? WHAT?!!! They could have spayed her even if she's in heat all this time and this is the first I'm hearing about it?!! We're talking four weeks of frequent, spine-wrenching, sleep-piercing--nay, sleep IMPALING--squalls, not to mention occasional heat-spawned urinary errors in judgment (the most recent of which occurred ON MY EFFING ELECTRIC BLANKET!!!!) and that all could have been negated 28 days ago? EFF!!!

Turns out what the vet person meant is that the surgery can still occur even if a cat is in heat, it's just more complicated to do. For one thing, they won't be able to tell if the cat is in heat until they "get in there" and see the uterus for themselves. After that, it's just a matter of it being a more complicated surgery, I guess due to the attending inflamation, which would cost an additional $17 to $39 to accomplish. The vet person assured me, though, that it would not be more complicated for the cat herself, a point I wasn't sure if I entirely bought.

Rather than subject the cat to any potential complication, I opted to just reschedule the surgery for next week--a decision I lived to regret after she kept us up half the night with her loud and electric-blanket-soiling antics, not to mention a spot of cat piss I found in the living room that had been soaking in for who knows how long.

So we've another week to wait this out. Hopefully the heat session she's in now is the last one and hopefully we're on the final day of it.