The cat again and other things

I took Dominic to the vet on yesterday morning and he yowled all 6 blocks on the bus in his cat carrier. We went into a tiny waiting room full of small yappy dogs, and had to wait 50 minutes before they showed us a room, and another 20 for the vet to actually come in. He poked and prodded, took a rectal temperature (I had to hold the poor beast down, talk about humiliating a proud cat ...) and then berated me for not having him up to date on his vaccinations (my legit excuse of not having had the $ for it in the last year was shrugged off) and told that I SHOULD NOT let my cat outside. Whatever. Then he went off to get an estimate written up of all the things he wanted done ... blood tests, vaccines, xrays, drug shots, maybe splints, etc ... and came back asking for $503. Riiight. Not a big deal to many folks, but a huge one to us right now. I asked for just a splint and waiting a few days to see, as the paw had never swollen and wasn't cut in any way. He declined, saying he wouldn't know how to without xrays, so I asked for the least he could do, which was a cortizone shot and some other shot that he didn't name, and of course a glucose test to make sure he could have steroids. We got out of there for a measly $168 (including an old bill from last year) and came home, having just missed the bus we walked the 6 blocks in the rain. Cat carriers were not made to be actually carried long distances, and I was rather glad to finally get home. The part that has me rather angry is that this morning, his paw had a huge swollen spot on it where there had been none for 3 days. My temptation is to say the vet mucked it up by squeezing it around, and actually made a fractured bone worse ... but I suppose there could be other explanations. He's in more pain now than he was, but we shall see. I don't like to see him hobbling and crying when he jumps up/down (because he WILL do that no matter what I tell him, and there's no way to prevent it short of putting him in the carrier for days which I won't do). We shall see.

In other news, I had a great day w/Paula after that touring the Whitney Museum and seeing some really cool things like Calder's Circus (the guy known for big mobiles) that was the most delighfully whimsical and humorous stuff. See Paula's pics :) since she took lots and beat me to blogging them by a long shot.

Then we went for a bite at a Noodle shop, then on to Michael's work where they were finishing up the scribble drawings.