Mystery Blood and Medicare

To this day, I still don't know where the blood came from. One minute I was sitting at the kitchen table, paying bills like a good human, and the next I was grabbing cats in a frenzy, pulling up tails and examining teeth and gums looking for leaks. I never found any. I usually never do. I don't think many humans, unless they are trained in the fine arts of cat trickery by a master cat, ever do. I am incredibly gullible and ridiculously inept when matching wits with kitties, but I don't care. That is just how life is. They can't write computer software-at least I don't think they can-and I can't clean my own butt with my tongue, at least my few attempts so far have been far from successful. I am a cat owner, a special breed of human that is programmed genetically to be overly optimistic and quietly insane.

Just ask my husband what he thought that day. He came home in the midst of my frantic attempt to track down the owner of the trail of blood drops that stretched from my kitchen floor across the sink, just ending suddenly at the pantry door. There I was, wild-eyed and hair standing on end, grasping the front of a disgruntled feline with one hand and lifting its tail with the other, scrutinizing what was under that tail with what appeared to be at first, I am sure, a rather unnatural and rapt interest.

And to top it off, I was using my soothing voice to calm the cat, named Belle, whose emotions appeared to range from confusion to disgust to indignation, while simultaneously trying to shout instructions at my husband, Will, sounding something like this:

"There's blood everywhere, grab Desdemona and check her butt! It's okay, Belle, honey, Mommy needs to see what's under your tail."

"Check her what? What blood?"

"Her butt! Then check her gums! She could be bleeding from her gums or her butt! Look for wounds! Check her eyes! It's okay, Belle, let Mommy see those pretty-ouch!-pointy little teeth."