If you are a cat, and you live with a human, you have probably seen one of these. It’s a broom. It belongs in the closet, but every now and then, if you’re lucky, your human will leave it out long enough for you to sniff it and bite on it.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I have nothing else to keep myself occupied. When I’m not being “vintage” on the bookshelf…

…or checking out the wall lamp…

…or helping Mom organize vintage postcards…

…or helping her with family history…

…or seeing how small of a plastic box I can fit into, I sometimes find it fun to bite on the broom. Whenever Mom sees me doing this, she always says something like “Foster! We do not bite on the broom, no we do not!” At which point she puts it away and out of my reach.

Well, I guess you could say this last time she noticed me a little too late, because unbeknownst to her, I had already swallowed some of the broom! It wasn’t until a day or so later, that I, ah, shall we say, “expelled” a hairball onto the floor in the hallway! (If you have experience with cats, you already know how we do this. If not, you may want to look it up. But not right after lunch, just saying.) I might also mention that Mom has no qualms whatsoever about inspecting the aforementioned hairballs. That’s how she found the evidence.

Well, I don’t have to tell you that the first thing she did was look up what happens if a cat swallows plastic. She tried not to, because she knew it would probably be something scary, but she couldn’t resist. Soon I noticed she had put the pieces of the broom into a baggie and put it in her purse. Before I knew it she had made a phone call, and then I found myself being stuffed (the indignity!) into my cat carrier and on the way to the vet. Mom said I was due for my annual check up and shots too, so we could get that taken care of all at once.

So in case you didn’t know, because of Social Distancing, your human can’t go into the vet’s office with you. You have to call when you get there and tell them what parking space you’re in, and a technician comes out and gets your information. Because we were a “walk-in”, the wait was going to be from two to seven hours. They gave Mom the option of leaving me there so she wouldn’t have to wait outside in her car the whole time. They said they would call her when it was my turn.

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Mom said she was so nervous about me being at the vet by myself that she got a Starbuck’s and went home to work on her family history, hoping to make the time go by faster. She’s on a quest to find an elusive relative named Frank, who disappeared from her ‘radar’ after 1920. But she said she didn’t enjoy her research because she kept imagining me all by myself in a little kennel at the vet. Finally they called and said she could come get me. They had done X-rays and said my insides were fine, and I got my physical and shots, too.

The first thing I did when I got home was take a bath to wash off all the germs from the vet’s office.

Then it was time for a nap with Panda in the front room. I guess I don’t have to tell you that it was a long day!