Travails of a Goddess

So continues the saga of the life and times of Molly, feline goddess of Guam.

Even for deities life is imperfect, and one day she got sick. I don’t know what it was, something like cat fever. We thought she was going to die. This happened right at the time we were finally going through culture shock. Things on Guam had stopped being wonderful and there wasn’t a good thing anybody could say about the place to us. (This happens to most people, I understand, after about six months. It certainly did to us.) We felt so unhappy about our cat and displeased with the universe in general and Guam in particular that we made plans to give Molly a burial at sea. We didn’t even want her corpse on the island.

I guess that wasn't very reasonable.

Molly recovered. And so did we. As Molly regained her health, she became the epitome of beauty, at least as far as the local toms were concerned. Toms in profusion came to serenade her. She sat on the headboard and sang back to them. On good nights it was only a duet. Sometimes it was a Wagnerian chorus. No problem, we thought. Cats only stay in heat a day or two, and then it’s all over. But not Molly. Molly loved her state of passion and it seemed she might stay that way permanently. We decided it was time for Molly to visit the vet.

The veterinarian was Filipino, and it had been our experience that, in general, Asian medical practitioners were uncomfortably fatalistic. Joanne devised a test. When we made an appointment for Molly, she asked him, “How many cats die from this surgery?”

“Die? Why should any of them die?” the vet replied. This was the right answer. There is no reason for a cat to die from spaying. More cats die from yowling than spaying.

The spaying went without remarkable incident. Well, Molly did get loose and hide herself under the refrigerator. I didn’t know cats could make themselves that flat. Molly was a small cat, but even so….