stereotypical single woman

Poor, poor Marty. Before I start this story I would like to stress that he will be fine - because I feel that I need to reassure not only the reading public but myself as well.

Marty is one of those animals that is always under foot. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing, he just all of a sudden shows up, inches from your face, wanting to know what’s going on. I cannot take a shower without him trying to get into the tub to see what I’m doing. He also has no fear - I can turn on any sort of power tool and instead of running and hiding under the bed from the noise like a normal cat he tries to get closer to see how it works. He always wants to help - it doesn’t matter if I’m cooking, vacuuming, doing dishes, or cleaning the sink. He’s always right there, but because he’s always right there after a few minutes you just don’t see him anymore. He just becomes part of the woodwork.

Monday night, fueled by two cups of very strong coffee (see previous post) I decided to continue unpacking and cleaning my kitchen. Things were going fine, I was getting stuff done and the place was looking so much better. It’s still very disorganized inside because I’ve spent so much time working outside. But with only the cats and I living there right now it hasn’t really been an issue. However after a few weeks of moving boxes still in front of the refrigerator it just gets old and the time comes when you can’t use the “I just moved in excuse” to explain the mess anymore, even to yourself.

So I was on a cleaning frenzy, complete with all kinds of cleaners containing bleach and other harmful chemicals. Now I know Marty was in the kitchen with me on and off throughout the evening. I know I didn’t spill or spray anything directly on him. I honestly don’t know what exactly did happen to him. But somehow he got something in his right eye. I didn’t notice anything was wrong until it was time for bed and I saw that his eye looked a little swollen. I immediately grabbed him and took him to the sink to flush his eyes, which he did not appreciate (ok, I wouldn’t be so happy if some 15x my size grabbed me and tried to pry my eye open and shove it under running water either) so after a few scratches I instead flushed it for about 5 minutes using the eye saline solution they told me to rinse my piercing with. After that he was acting normal, and while the eye was a little swollen, it was nothing horrible so we went to bed.

At 6:45 the next morning my alarm woke me up. Let me stress to you how odd this is. My alarm never wakes me up. It tells me I have to get out of bed, but Marty feels it is his duty to wake me up at least a half an hour beforehand. Sometimes he head butts me but lately he’s been using the attack the toes tactic, which proves to be very effective on someone whose feet are extremely ticklish. When the alarm went off I bolted out of bed and he was still asleep next to me and his eye was completely swollen shut. I felt like a horrible mother for not waking up and checking on him every hour during the night. I had him at the vet across town less than a half an hour later.

He was an angel at the vet. Purring up a storm, prowling around and checking out the examination room with his good eye, and loving everyone that came into the room even though he had dye put in his eye, blood drawn, and a thermometer shoved up his ass. The diagnosis - a chemical burn in his eye. The treatment - painkillers and antibiotics given orally once a day and a topical eye ointment applied three times a day for the next ten days. All because he had to know what I was doing.