The Saturday Morning Post: Fixed or Broken?

If cats and dogs could talk, especially male cats and dogs, I am sure that they would rant that what the vet does is not "fix" them, but "breaks" them.  It worked just fine before the veterinarian removed parts.  Female cats and dogs probably have a more mixed opinion, some are probably relieved that they will never have half a dozen babies to raise again and the pesky toms and studs will stop pestering them.  Others may really want a family, and well they won't.  The babies have a better quality of life when the numbers are manageable.  

I stumbled across the YouTube channel of Ryan an American twink living in Tokyo studying Japanese for a year.  He is unrestrained, a little crazy, and can be kind of fun to listen to.  He has adopted a cat.  In one video he describes taking the cat in to be "fixed." The cat is an adolescent male, and was doing what young males do - marking his territory.  For a male cat this is spraying, aka urinating, on the woodwork, furniture, pillows, or the legs of his owner.  This sends a message to others to stay away, or I will hiss and claw your eyes out.  Reminds me of the bar stools at the Cactus Club on a Saturday night.  

When Ryan went to pick the cat up from the vet after the procedure, the cat was happy to see him, happy to get away from the vet.  The vet tech handed Ryan a little stainless steel bowl, he opened the cover, and in the bowl was what had been removed from the cat.  Two little oval, kind of gristly looking balls.  They wanted to know if he wanted to take them with him.  To keep them. Apparently some people think that when the cat dies, the removed bits should be buried or cremated with them, so when the cat goes into the afterlife they are whole again. 

Thinking about this, if there is afterlife for cats, they are going to be really pissed when they find that they can't keep their balls while alive, but they can have them back after they are dead.  If cats are reincarnated, and come back as cats, they will come hiss and try to claw our eyes out.  

This reminded me of Uncle Dick.  Dick was raised on a farm, when he was a teenager one of his uncles showed him how to castrate pigs.  You trap the pig between a fence and a gate, rinse the area with alcohol and it was the era of straight razors, it would be over and the pig would squeal away in a minute.  When I was a teenager, Aunt Edith had a new cat, Midnight.  The Vet wanted $100 to "fix" Midnight. Dick thought that was silly.  Midnight hissed at him the rest of his life. 

Dick was a character.  He was a great storyteller, I should start collecting the Dick stories.