Crazy Crap Item #214: The part where I rechristen the cat

Well, not to beat a dead horse, but I'm currently in beautiful Banning, Ca., home of my parents, assisting as my father recovers from a broken arm.

Local lore says my dad was felled by a small tabby kitten. Aforementioned feline had been purchased in the hopes that she would provide some nice distraction and amusement for my parents, whose range of activities have become a bit more constricted of late.

We, you see, are cat people. Worry not: I shall not digress into some cliche about "dog people" versus "cat people." Instead, I will note that throughout the years of my growing up, we owned somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 cats. Not at once, mind you. The most at one blow was five, and that was because of the birth of kittens, which were quickly dispersed to good homes.

And let me say, in our defense, we actually sought out only very few of these cats. Rosie, our first cat, was picked up, I believe, from a "free kitten" box at the local Gemco. She was promised to my sister Liz--her sole pet. Liz soon proved too young to take on such a responsibility, and was manipulated into making Rosie the "family cat" in exchange for what was termed a "knickknack doll." I'm not sure what a "knickknack doll" actually is, but it is family lore, and must be reported accurately.

Of our other cats, I recall selecting a feisty white kitten with orange tail, dubbed Boris, from a local pet shop, in later years. I believe our two Petunias, Petunia 1 and Petunia 2, were also deliberately acquired.

But more typically, our cats found us. There was Blue Eyes (named for her blue eyes), who I believe was found on the shoulder of the freeway and taken home. Also, there was Bones (a quite skinny cat, you see), who, emaciated and weak, wandered out in front of my mother's car as she drove down the street. My sister leapt out to put him back on the curb, only to have him wander suicidally back into the road. Into the car he went.

Then there was my personal favorite, "Little Kitty" (by this time, we'd given up trying to come up with names). She simply wandered up on our front porch and peered in the front window (a large, plate glass affair). My dad opened the front door, and inquired, "What do you want?" She skipped merrily in, and we had ourselves a cat.

Sparky, a feisty, fire-engine red kitten who later grew to a lazy, grumpy, strawberry blond, similarly wandered into our yard, and lodged himself under our house. Several claw swipes and one big bite to the thumb (my brother's), and he was ours.

I'll omit the rest, except a brief mention of Roger (who turned out to be a girl) and Jubilations, a wild tom cat who never really "belonged" to us, but rather lived off the bounty of our offerings of backyard snacks.

In fact, I've always rather suspected that we operated something like the underground railroad for cats. I've imagined whispered mews in back alleys, consisting of, "If you're ever in trouble, hit up the Petersons." Perhaps they even had a code of hobo symbols that had been scratched into the olive tree in our front yard. "Endless kibble, guaranteed home, moderate teasing."

But I digress. Back to the main topic, the borderline-insane kitten who currently makes her home in Banning. Like Roger, she looks like a boy to us all, but she is in fact a girl. Due to her boundless energy and penchant for flying around the house as if the very devil were on her tail, she has been named "Zipper."

It was during one of these wild sprints that she careened into my dad, knocking him off balance on a slippery kitchen floor. The result: one broken arm (not the cat's).

So, it was assumed, the cat was a very bad idea. A menace, one might say.

Subsequent to this, my dad had yet another fall, non-cat-related, and was taken to his doctor. In the waiting room, he fell again. Since there were now no cats to be implicated, it was decided that further investigation was required.

A trip to the emergency room later, a check-in to the hospital, and a very thorough exam by a wonderful intern named Dr. Haddad, and some interesting results developed. My dad, it seems, has sky-high sodium levels. He is chronically dehydrated. His kidneys are struggling. His blood pressure is a perilously low 60 over 40 (normal is 120 over 80).

Dr. Haddad looks at his entire medical record and concludes that the approximate 412 water pills they have him taking (an exagerration on my part) are EXCESSIVE IN THE EXTREME. His current doctors (seen for a variety of issues) have simply not gotten on the same page, and by not looking at the big picture, have created a whole parcel of new woes.

So, given my dad's extreme dehydration, weak kidneys and low blood pressure, it's no wonder a kitten could knock him over.

In fact, one could argue that if it hadn't been for our small spastic tabby friend, none of these issues would've been uncovered. The broken arm put my dad in a position to receive thorough and comprehensive treatment--something he apparently had not been receiving.

Given all this, I've decided Zipper needs a new name. I have thus dubbed her: "Lucky Break." "Lucky" for short.