Category: Hachitaro News

Hachitaro News, 28 December 2006 to 22 January 2007

Well, well: Hachitaro topped 3.8kg (about 8.38 pounds).
Finally, it became his surgery day. (Think about the future, Hachitaro. We’d have a lot of trouble if you challenge your uncle Kyoku.)

The day before, he didn’t get any food after 5:00 p.m., and he couldn’t have water after 9:00. If he understood his situation, we could explain things to him; but of course he is a cat, so he didn’t understand why he couldn’t eat and drink. We didn’t feed the other two, either.

On the surgery day, the 22nd, we took Hachitaro to the animal hospital at 10:00 a.m. He was due for surgery in the afternoon, and we could pick him up in the evening.

When we went back home that morning, Kuro seemed quiet: he felt something wrong? Kyoku was almost the same as usual.

The vet said he would call to let us know when we could pick Hachitaro up. So I carried the portable phone around with me and waited for the call. Finally, the vet called at around 5:30 p.m. and said that Hachitaro still couldn’t stand steadily, so he would call again later.

We thought that Hachitaro was the healthiest among our three cats, so we suddenly became anxious. Only imagining not-good things! I continued to carry the phone around with me and waited. Finally, the vet called us around 6:30 p.m. and we went to the animal clinic.

At the animal clinic, there were two small dog patients, the kind of dogs that are currently popular in Japan. And we heard a cheerful conversation between the vet and a lady who owned two expensive dogs. It seems many of the patients are pet-shop dogs owned by wealthy people.
Well, so there. Our cats are also little princes, even though they were originally from our yard. So we thought as we went back home on foot with Hachitaro after paying the expensive surgery fee…

When we arrived home, Hachitaro wasn’t lively, shivering, and his walking wasn’t steady for a while, but then he ran around the house with double energy. Is this like ‘a lion at home and a mouse abroad’?
When he arrived home, he was wearing a stiff-necked collar like Kuro had to wear before. But he seemed to be choking, so he tried to remove it by himself and writhed around. It was so hard for him, we felt sorry for him and took it off; then we put a blue collar on him, that we had bought for Kuro and never used, after fixing the size. At first, of course, Hachitaro looked uncomfortable, but he got used to wearing it. It looks sort of cute on him. But we’d never say the shaved part under his tail is cute.

– YS, 24 January 2007

24 January 2007