who we are / how we live: Henry Goes to the Vet

(Henry, at my Mom's house in Baltimore.)

When I decided to bring my two cats, Henry and Sasha, to live with me in Istanbul, my #1 concern was making sure they could never, ever escape into the city. Istanbul is a honeycomb of cat-sized nooks and crannies, and it is filled with legions of immoral, unscrupulous villains: feral dogs; dirty, boorish orphan cats; and wicked, unsupervised children who cut off the tails of animals for fun.

Then, about a month ago, it looked as if Henry had escaped the apartment while a team of carpenters installed our security system. (The irony wasn’t lost on him, I’m sure. In my incessant personification of my cats, Sasha is brilliant and sophisticated and Henry is always the idiot-savant. I throw a ball for Sasha and she will bring it back. Henry, on the other hand, is too stupid to chase after his toys, but clever enough to laugh while I throw them again and again and again. Henry, as a result, is fat, while Sasha is a sleek, athletic machine. “Sasha,” I imagine him saying, “if you just leave the ball, that woman will pick it up. You needn’t tire yourself.”)

(Sasha, who never tires.)

After I couldn’t find Henry in the apartment, I was petrified. My roommate, Mete, was certain that the fat guy was hiding somewhere, but I thought I better look around the neighborhood before he had the chance to get very far. I started in the back garden, which threw me into a swift panic.

Our garden is controlled by a mean, dead-eyed white cat, who makes ungodly noises at night, presumably to attract the desperate sluts from other gardens, who then make love to him in a wild cacophony of growls and hisses. Henry and Sasha were both “fixed” when they were kittens and each night, when the noise of illicit love rises from the garden into our living room windows, they freeze and look at each other with fear and confusion. Their ears twitch and I imagine they’re asking each other, “Do you think that’s how it’s done?” I always breathe a sigh of relief that I will never have to explain the natives’ ritual to my naïve, virgin boarders.

As soon as I locked eyes with Evil White Cat McGee in the garden, I felt a chill run through my body. Henry is pudgy and dumb. He is a pure bred Persian, a pretty boy. In this part of the world, they call him an “Iranian” cat, a phrase that conjures images of him smoking opium in some posh compound, pining over the old days when the Shah held fabulous parties and no one concerned themselves with “the public.” If Henry was outside, lost in the neighborhood, he was surely stuck in a kittified Gangs of New York hell. There are thousands of cats in Istanbul and they are fiercely territorial. If Henry was forced to defend himself, he still had his claws, though I doubted he knew how to use them. He is effete and slow; he doesn’t walk so much as tumble forward.

My cats were born rich, that woman brings their food to them every morning, and they have never heard of, much less seen, the so-called “animal kingdom.” Henry and Sasha seem to have no idea that feather toys are meant to resemble real birds, or that kitty jungle gyms are a less fun version of actual trees. In the end, all of my panic was unnecessary, as Henry casually stumbled through the apartment as soon as Mete arrived. I picked up Henry and stared at his big eyes and flat, nearly concave face; I prayed that he was too stupid to purposely play an adolescent prank on me, but somehow, I was filled with doubt. Maybe this was my punishment for selfishly shielding him from the real carnal pleasures of the cat world? “Were you frightened?” he seemed to say.

As it turns out, Henry is perfectly capable of getting into trouble at home. On Sunday, I rushed him to the vet’s office after his vile, dog-like habit of drinking out of the toilet finally caught up with him. He hadn’t eaten in days and his normal, compulsive laziness had transformed into an ugly depression.

Most Turkish people don’t have pets. This is partially from the practice of Islam, which some people interpret as expressly forbidding animals in the home. It is also a natural result of people not having enough money to care for animals. Although many people, especially women, will put out food for stray animals, they are less likely to take dogs or cats inside in the winter or take them to the vet when they are ill. But as Istanbul is changing, and I live in one of the most gentrified, foreign-friendly neighborhoods in the city, I can find at least five veterinary offices in a five block radius of my house.

I was thrilled to find a vet open on Sunday and rushed Henry over there in his name-brand kitty carrier. Unbelievably, we were able to walk right in without an appointment and see the doctor immediately. No unnecessary paperwork, no color-coded medical files, no searching for a 24-hour emergency vet.

Henry and Sasha’s first vet was in Uptown Minneapolis, where the office had separate entries and waiting areas for dogs and cats. The vet offered chiropractic care, herbal supplements, and acupuncture. Their doctor was a sensitive but straight-talking gay woman, who inadvertently set me up on this path of shameless pandering and kitty personification when I asked her how to deal with Henry’s habit of viciously biting me.

Many mornings I woke up to feel his sharp little teeth hooked onto my nose. The vet looked me in the eyes and said (with all seriousness), “When my cat bites me, I don’t get angry, I just turn to him and honestly say, That hurt me.” Her face contorted to show her pain. “Don’t worry, he’ll understand.” I nodded eagerly. Yes, I thought, Henry will understand. Why hadn’t I thought of that? “Yes! Why hadn’t I thought of that?!” Henry seemed to think.

Over the years, we came to trust this doctor. She responded with compassion and was non-judgmental when it turned out Sasha had contracted herpes in her eye (don’t ask) and Henry had an impacted testicle. Henry’s testicle required a special operation that she likened to being “spayed,” the girl version of being neutered, but she said it with such a spirit of openmindedness and love, that I was sure Henry would someday be comfortable in his new gender identity. Sasha was prescribed some herbs for her “personal issue,” which worked perfectly to calm those troublesome flare ups. In later years, our vet grew concerned about Henry’s tartar build up and sent us off with a teeny tiny little kitty toothbrush and toothpaste. She encouraged me to consider buying Kitty Medical Insurance, which, she assured me, the office honored fully.

(Henry, embracing his new gender identity.

How could Muslims possibly think cats are dirty?)

So imagine my surprise when our new Turkish Vet didn’t even bother to ask Henry’s name. I kept trying to insert it into my story, just in case he had inadvertently forgotten to ask, “Well,” I said, “Henry has been sick for four days, and poor Henry isn’t eating at all…” He asked The Cat’s age, took the little sample of poo I had brought, gave The Cat a once-over and then asked if he could keep The Cat to observe him for a few days. Keep him? I thought. You barely know him.

Once I had accepted the idea that it would be best to leave Henry for observation, I immediately asked, “So how much does that cost?” My cats may be rich compared to all the orphans in the neighborhood, but they weren’t born with trust funds and I seriously doubted this vet honored Kitty Insurance. The grand total for a night’s stay with food and medicine: $20. “Sure, keep him,” I said.

Henry is now recovering at the vet’s office for a few more days. They are feeding him, taking tests, monitoring his progress. I called this morning to check up on him and tried not to snap when the vet said, “The Cat—is it a girl or a boy?”

“He’s a boy!” I nearly shouted back, “His name is HENRY.”

“Well, anyway,” the vet replied, “he is doing much better.”

At this point, I’m starting to come to terms with the fact that for a cat to receive proper medical care, it may not be necessary to call him by his first and last name, in the manner of American vets. His full title, Henry Troutman, now seems slightly excessive. In fact, the vet couldn’t even get my name right, and jotted it by my phone number on a little sheet of paper as, “Emilliee” (rhymes with cry-baBy).

In the meantime, Henry is probably getting accustomed to being fed by hand and when he gets home, he’ll undoubtedly bring out that familiar idiot in me, “Henry, you scared me. When you drink out of the toilet, you hurt me.” If the day comes that he finally does manage to escape, into a world of manly cats and free love, no one except me will be surprised. “Henry Troutman—I thought we had an understanding.”