RUSH: I had to take my little cat to the vet last night, to the emergency vet. Little Punkin. Yeah, turns out it’s something in the urinary tract, an infection. She’s a Ruddy Abyssinian. I got her from a breeder, and the breeder does shows for cats, so there’s a little inbreeding that goes on. Sometimes if you get a cat that way, from a show breeder, then they have some weaknesses with the immune system and this kind of thing. (interruption) What’s that? Well, I would have loved to have been able to take family leave but this happened last night at seven o’clock, but I don’t think of that. I didn’t even think of that. See, this is the thing. I have my staff saying, ‘Well, you could take family leave.’ Everybody around here is oriented toward vacation time except me. Everybody around here oriented toward time off except me. Yes, just kidding. Anyway, she’s got this condition. Her bladder forms little crystals that end up blocking the urinary tract, and she thinks she’s gotta go to the bathroom and can’t. Poor little thing was suffering in the litter box. I’m watching this for 25 minutes. I knew what had happened, because we have a special food for this condition. It’s a soft food made by Ralston Purina, and of course they discontinued it a month ago, and the vet said, ‘Well, here’s the substitute for it; does the same stuff.’ She doesn’t like it as much. It’s hard food. She eats it, but she doesn’t like it as much.
I also think that she was sending me a message for being gone a week. She was all over me from three o’clock this morning on. I didn’t get a whole lot of sleep. She’s head butting me, climbing on my hair, literally pulling my hair on the pillow. She’s getting me back. We took her to the emergency vet last night, got antibiotics, and returned around 10:30 or 11 o’clock. I was exhausted anyway from the time away. I just felt so sorry for this little cat because I don’t know if any of you have had urinary tract infections, but you think you gotta go to the bathroom, you think you gotta pee and you can’t. Of course, she was sitting there strange, started bleeding a little bit. I’m not going to sit there and watch this. I’m not going to wait overnight ’til the regular vet opens up. So we went to the emergency vet down on Forest Hills Boulevard, Cats Only — or some such thing — and they marveled in there. They don’t get to see Abyssinians much. By the way, my cat is not the kind of pussycat that’s wiping out those Hef bunnies down in the Keys. Don’t confuse this. This is a tame cat, lovely little cat, going to be ten years old in August. Aside from all this, she’s the picture of health.