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Thyroid
25 July 2005
My Misha-cat has been diagnosed with an overactive thyroid. This is presumably to compensate for her underactive brain. Ah, well. It just means more fuss and money, that's all. She's a cat, she likes this stuff.
We actually took her to the vet on Friday, but couldn't get the results till now, on account of not being here. Been doing Write Fantastic gigs all over the north-east, Thursday and Friday; finished up Friday night in Sunderland, and took advantage of the chance to deliver a chilli plant to my friends Bryan & Mary of that burgh. Largely to Mary, who is the gardener, and who had taken delivery of a greenhouse in the spring. So I promised her a chilli, and set it aside in its early seedling days, and somehow never got it down to her till now. To some extent I feel guilty, because I feel that I’ve had the best of it, the nursing & nourishing through its seedlinghood and those difficult sapling months, to the now of its maturity; but also I feel outraged, because there is a great irony going on here. All my other dozen-odd chilli plants I repotted into bigger pots, a little while back, because that’s what the literature recommends; this one I left in its six-inch, as being that much easier to transport the fifteen-odd miles to Sunderland. So there's a dozen on this hand, and one on the other; and guess which one has burgeoned, has proved fecund, has set fruit first and is now producing eight or nine chillis, where the others have all gone leafy and leggy and have barely started thinking about fruiting? It’s all about stress, I guess, my own are just too comfy and well-fed. Bah humbug, is what I say.
Still, I’m hoping that once Misha's on whatever costly medication the vet recommends, she too will become comfy & well-fed. She has been distinctly scrawny for a couple of years now; I’d like to get back to the days when people used to comment rudely on her girth & heft.
© Chaz Brenchley 2005
Reproduced here by permission of Chaz Brenchley, who asserts his moral right to be identified as the author of this work.