Dr. Bond came into the examining room. He was tall and unsmiling. He looked like someone who actually could have finished medical school. Somehow she’d imagined that pet therapists were sort of like tarot card readers. Dr. Bond looked like he’d be right at home in a surgeon’s lounge, with his long legs, his impeccably pressed dress shirt with glinting cuff links. She could see the outline of his chest muscles underneath. She had wanted to say something along the lines of “I’m having a hard time getting him to open up to me, Doc,” but decided to keep her mouth shut.
The cat emitted a low, threatening growl. “Let him out,” Bond said. Without taking his eyes off the forms she’d filled out, he opened a low cupboard beneath the examining table. Once she got the little door to the cage open, the cat dashed straight for the cupboard.
Dr. Bond closed the cupboard door halfway and went back to reading the forms. When he finished a page, he turned it in an abrupt, final manner, pinning the completed page to the table with a strong, square-ended finger. Pru sat and waited. She wondered if she should bring up the kitty Prozac or let him suggest it.
Dr. Bond frowned and looked up at Pru. He was reading the daily diary, where her tone had become a bit tongue-in-cheek. “Well,” he said, in his deep rumble, “I think I see what part of the problem is.”
“Ah,” Pru said. She had decided to follow his lead and say as little as possible.
He closed up the folder and crossed his arms. “So, why are you here?”
Look in the friggin’ chart I just spent an hour filling out, she thought. “Well, he’s a really bad cat.”
“Cats are neither good nor bad. They sometimes have impulses they can’t control,” Dr. Bond said, pinching an invisible thread off his spotless white trousers. “Go on.”
“I was going to bring him back to the Humane Society, where I got him, but I wanted to try this first. My friend says you can give him some kind of kitty Prozac?”
“Why did you get this cat?”
“Sorry?”
“Why did you get this cat?” He looked up at her with clear, sharp eyes.
She faltered. Nothing she thought of sounded quite right. “Oh . . . the usual reasons, I guess,” she said.
“And what is he doing that’s objectionable, specifically?”
“Peeing. On everything.”
“Is he peeing or spraying?”
Peeing or spraying. Did he think she was on her knees, watching the cat soiling the bookcases? “I don’t know,” she stammered. “Is there a difference?”
“Yes,” Dr. Bond said briskly. He pulled a clean piece of paper from a drawer in the examining table and turned it over on the table. He took a gold pen from his chest pocket, screwed off the cap, and handed it to Pru. “Let’s take a look at your setup. Will you draw a map of your apartment?”
She drew the outlines of her apartment, indicating the bedroom, living room, kitchen, bathroom, and the hallway. “It’s bigger than it looks,” she said, self-consciously.
“That’s fine,” Dr. Bond interrupted. “Now, let’s indicate where kitty is allowed to go during the day.”
“Here. Just the kitchen. Since the whole closet incident, you know.” Her friend Fiona had given her a baby gate to stretch across the doorway of the kitchen, and the cat hadn’t yet managed to haul his massiveness over it.
Dr. Bond frowned. “Is that it? Okay, where is he at night?” She circled the tiny hall closet. She didn’t like looking at the map. It made sense when she was at home, but here, the limits of the cat’s domain made her uncomfortable.
“That’s not much room,” said Dr. Bond. “Does he go outside at all?”
“No.”
She was feeling accused and defensive. But why should she? Wasn’t she here, spending two hundred bucks to try to save the damn cat’s life? She hadn’t thrown him out on the street, or taken him back to the shelter . . . didn’t she deserve some points here? Animal people, Pru thought sulkily. They never have nice furniture, and you can never please them. Not really.
The cat finally stuck his head out from the cabinet to see what was going on. Dr. Bond ignored him and said, wearily, “I see you’re using pine litter. How did you choose pine?”
“I like the smell, I guess.”
“You like the smell,” he repeated, significantly, making a note. “And his food? You feed him . . . canned? Why?”
I like the smell, she thought. “Isn’t that what you feed cats?”
“Sometimes.” Then it seemed he’d noticed that the cat had come out and was sniffing the air. Dr. Bond reached a long finger down to hover just above the cat’s nose, and said, in a completely different tone, “How you doing down there, big guy?” Suddenly he was softer, kinder. He scratched the cat gently between the ears. “Good boy, handsome boy,” he said. The gesture made Pru a little sad, and a little envious. She wondered when was the last time either one of them had been touched like that. She had the impulse to push her head under Dr. Bond’s hand, too.
He straightened up again. “Here’s what I’m going to recommend. For starters, you need to let him out of this confined area.” He held up a hand before she could speak. “I know, he’ll spray everywhere. And yes, he will, for a while. He’s spraying because he’s anxious and unhappy. But cats interpret those feelings as threats, and when male cats are threatened, they spray.”
“Oh,” she said, nodding vigorously. “Ah.” She tried to look interested.
“Locking him up is compounding the problem. He’s going to keep marking until he feels safe. We need to work on what’s threatening him, so he won’t have to spray anymore. And in the meantime, we have to reduce some
