He's small, he's ginger, and he's a cat.
It's been about a year since I moved in with Dan, which means it's been about a year of regular howling from Marvin and equally consistent crying episodes from me. I tried the hormone spray, the hormone collar, and the hormone diffuser. I let him go outside, briefly, before forcing him back inside before a truck could turn him into an orange pancake, because his favourite outdoor pursuit was sunbathing on the road. Finally, there was the calming cat food and an endless parade of ever more expensive cat toys until I just turned to medication.
The first dosage level worked for a whole month.
But after the 3:30 am wakeup screeches resumed, I decided things had to change. I told my old roommate (she's responsible for my ownership of the cat, through a tale that's telenovela-complicated) that I was going to surrender him. She said she was sure that her cousin would take him in a week. The day before he was supposed to leave, the cousin backed out. Then, Marvin's previous owner was supposed to call me so he could go on a one-week trial with her. She never did. Finally, my friend's cousin expressed some interest, before cancelling the day she was supposed to visit him. I haven't heard from her since, and I have now resigned myself to the fact that we'll never be separated. I'll be dead in the cold, hard ground, while Marvin naps on my grave in the afternoon sun.
I still have the surrender forms I printed off the Toronto Humane Society website, and I fill parts out during idle moments at work. But I probably won't send them in. Though he still spends most of the day making sounds that are like the wail of a banshee crossed with the blare of a car alarm, he sleeps through the night. That's enough. And it only took one simple trick.
I doubled his medication dosage.
No comments:
Post a Comment