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Prissy had a cold.
My extremely sleek and dignified calico cat had a serious cold. Her ears were hot, her eyes were glassy, she had a bad cough and her nose was runny.
I spent most of the evening wiping her nose after she sneezed. It is not easy to wipe a cat's nose. Cats are not fans of having tissues stuck in their faces, and Prissy was no exception. Finally she retreated to the back of the couch and sat in stoic martyrdom.
My mother had recently started college. She was studying to become a registered nurse. My mother did not have much of a sense of humor at that point. She was going through a nasty divorce with my dad, she had just taken a new job as a nurse's aide, and we were short of money, to put it nicely. She did not smile much those days, and she did not have a lot of patience for me or my cat.
I should tell you that it was my dad's idea to let me have Prissy. My mom had said no, but Daddy overruled her. I think that she resented Pris a bit because of Daddy. It did not matter. Prissy was there to stay and she and my mother had a cautious co-existence.
Prissy sneezed again. I wiped her little nose and got a grunt from my cat as thanks.
My mom looked up from her textbook with a serious expression. She was chewing the inside of her cheek, which she did when she was nervous or deep in thought.
"I think I have something for that cat," she said slowly, squinting at Prissy. She got up and went to the bathroom.
Prissy squinted back and snuffled.
Moma came back with a small tablet in her fingers.
"What's that?" I asked, a bit nervous. My cat was the closest friend I had, and I did not trust my mother's six months of nursing school to cure her cold.
"Benadryl," she said calmly. "Hold her paws. I don't want her to scratch me."
"Can you give that to a cat?" I asked hesitantly.
"Sure. It won't kill her. People take it all of the time."
I picked up Prissy carefully and held her paws tightly. Prissy knew that something was about to happen, and she immediately tensed up and started making a low growling noise.
"Oh, shut up, cat," my mom said. "This will make you feel better."
Somehow my mom pried Prissy's mouth open and stuffed the pill down my cat's throat. Prissy squirmed and fought, but my mother was stronger. My mother was also determined; after all, this was her first patient!
There was a happy gleam in my mom's eyes.
Once the pill was down, I dropped my cat on the floor. She shook herself off and ran back up on the back of the couch. She cast a nasty glance at both of us before sitting down. She started to clean herself.
I looked at my mom.
"Oh, she'll be fine," Moma said. "She'll just sleep a bit." With that, she went into the kitchen to study.
I was skeptical so I kept a close eye on my cat. It had only been a couple of weeks since I had to explain the metric system to my mom. This made me a bit worried about the method that she had used to figure out the dosage for my cat - if there even was a method.
Prissy decided to get off the couch. She stood up and stretched and promptly fell off of the couch and onto the cushions. I jumped and tried to grab her but she half-jumped, half-slid onto the floor.
"Moma!" I yelled. "There's something wrong with Prissy!"
"What?" Moma yelled back. "What's she doing?"
I watched Prissy swaying slightly and stumbling across the carpet. "She looks like she's drunk!"
"That's just the medicine making her sleepy," Moma said matter-of-factly. "She'll be fine. She just needs to sleep it off."
As the wife of an alcoholic, my mom was no stranger to the phrase "sleeping it off." Of course, I wasn't happy with that advice. This was my cat, after all, not my dad. I was used to seeing my dad trashed. Seeing my cat acting drunk was something totally new and disturbing.
Prissy stumbled a little further, and I ran over and picked her up. I took her to my room and laid her in her little bed. She slept all night. I kept waking up to see if she was still breathing, convinced that my mom had inadvertently killed my cat.
The next morning, Prissy woke up and went bounding to the litter box. She took the longest pee I have ever seen a cat take. She then trotted off to the kitchen. I followed.
My mother was getting breakfast ready. She looked down at Prissy.
"Well, you look better, cat," she said dryly. "Maybe now you won't get cat snot all over my couch."
Prissy fully recovered but I glimpsed, in that small moment in our kitchen, just what a compassionate nurse that my mom was going to be. I shuddered for her future patients.
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