I don’t like to admit I’m superstitious, but that doesn’t stop me from being superstitious. It’s something I picked up from my mother. My sisters and I all knock on wood, just like Mom did.
As if the act of tapping something made of wood will hold the proponents of life-altering bad things at bay. I just presume all the bad things that happen to me are when I fail to knock on wood. My father thought we were all nuts.
Mom also believed bad things happened in threes. Frankly, so much bad stuff happens it’s hard not to find three. I had to take Sweet Pea to the vet.
It’s not an excursion she enjoys but since losing Cairo, I’ve changed my tune on sick cats. The whole “I’ll just keep an eye on her for 24 hours” has morphed into a police response to an abducted child: the first 24 hours are critical. After sneaking the cage from the basement with ninja-like prowess, I scooped Pea from her bed where she was blissfully sleeping.
She is tiny, maybe eight or nine pounds. But she is mighty. Within a minute, I had ribbons of blood running down my arms.
The minute I picked her up, I’d pulled the pin on a hand grenade. As I wrestled with the door closure, she exploded out of the cage and went to hide in some part of the house I had yet to discover. In 60 years.
Pea did not go to the vet that day. I had to call and admit defeat, and the young woman on the other end of the line did not seem surprised, at all. It seems many of you are playing with hand grenades.
We made .