I AND THOU?

I came home Saturday from five weeks on the road to find that my cat, Tibby, was deathly ill. She wasn't eating, was throwing up, not using her litter box and was lethargic and weak. I tried a couple of days of, "I'm home, Sweetie" therapy, but when she didn't perk up, I took her to the Vet yesterday. Turns out Tibby has a major bladder obstruction requiring four days in the Feline Hospital (at an outrageous pricetag - I guess I am officially now a single, cat-woman...).

But there was more news too. When the Vet came to make a report to me, she also noted that Tibby the cat, my gorgeous, female, blue-eyed, seal-point Himalayan, whom I have nurtured and doted on for five years, is actually, a male! It's true. I demanded that the Vet prove it to me, and she did.

In many ways, the past couple of years for me has been a series of dreadful let-downs in which I have repeatedly, absolutely misjudged people (beings?) near to me. I have had a few mind-numbing bouts over friends whom I thought loved the same things I did, who turned out to have all the moral maturity of the average Venus fly trap. The whole Passion-Mel Gibson thing brought me face-to-face with scores of people who just wanted to use me as some kind of doorway to celebrity. There has been a very close friend who suddenly one day phased me out without explanation or apparent cause. And then there was the shockingly awful misread that happened right under my professional nose, and which has made a paradigm shift in my whole way of looking at the world.

But in all of this, there was always Tibby to come home to. Tibby was the same always...except that she wasn't at all what I thought...being a he.

I've been feeling so sorry for myself this year. But then there I was last night, standing at the Vet's laughing loud and long. It's really kind of funny. I think it will save me from the new jaded posture I was trying out.