I'd be a Terrible Veterinarian

What Barney looked like in my memory as there
are no actual photos of this thing.

When little kids are asked what they want to be when they grow up a whole lot of them want to be veterinarians.  I don't know why.  I never thought about it, it never so much as crossed my mind.  Animals, to me when I was young, were just these unintelligent beings that we coexist with and some of them were quite tasty.  Nothing more and nothing less.  My folks really weren't big animal people either.  We got a Cocker Spaniel when I was about 4 or 5 years old.  With Cockers they are one of two things and sometimes both; they are either borderline retarded or they are mean savages hell bent on destroying everything in their path.  Our dog was like a dumbed down version of Forrest Gump.  My dad never referred to the dog by its given name of "Barney" but rather unaffectionately called him "that stupid dog".  Barney wasn't mean at all he was just a goofy, dumb canine that slobbered and drooled all over everything.  I liked the dog well enough but wasn't really that invested with him.  I would listen to my father mumble "stupid dog" as he picked up wet, drool covered toys and sneakers.  And like most kids, I would just kind of emulate what I saw from my folks.  So when Barney ran away (according to my parents) they were driving around the neighborhood looking for him and I was kind of off in my own little world without much concern and my mom asked me, "Dusty, are you sad that we can't find Barney?" to which I replied, "Why?  It’s just a dumb dog."  So, yeah this was my attitude towards animals.  I could take them or leave them and often times eat them. 

***(And I said "according to my parents" because I seem to have a different memory of what happened.  I have this vision and occurrence of a conversation in my head that Barney had actually committed "doggy suicide" on accident.  He had a fenced in thing around his dog house and he was attached to a chain and what I remember is that he jumped on top of his doghouse and tried to jump over the fence and it got caught and he hung himself.  My folks said I was crazy and they deny many of my early memories so it’s hard to tell what happened.)

So all of my vast animal experience brings me to last night.  My wife had a cat named Bonnie that she had had since she was 10 years old and has been living with her parents for these last several years.  So, last night was supposed to be our nice quiet evening alone.  The kids were all taken care of safely with their grandparents and we had planned on watching some movies and just relaxing.  The cat had different plans for us.  My father-in-law called me at around 9pm and said, "I need to talk to Katie.  Now!!  It’s an emergency."  I had left to run to the store and Katie wasn't with me so I asked him if I could help him.  "No, there is nothing you can do!!  Her 17 year old cat is dying and she needs to come say her final goodbyes"  I laughed because I thought he was joking, but when he didn't reciprocate the laughter I gathered myself and said "Really?" in my best concerned voice.  So I called Katie and was kind of chuckling as I told her, "Katie, your dad called and your old cat is dying if you want to go see it."  I didn't think she would honestly care and she's like "Of course I do, get home now so we can go."  My wife and I have made numerous attempts over our years together to get animals and each time we give up because we both lack the patience to take care of them (having kids is hard enough without a dog to worry about).  So based on that logic I didn't think it would be a big deal to her.
I ran home to pick her up, and I kept thinking to myself about how this was going to kind of mess up the whole night and other selfish things. 

When we got there it was her mom, her sister, and her husband Jeff all kind of gathered around the sickly cat.  They were all talking about what to do and how sad it was and I was sneaking off into the other room to watch the Falcon's game.  I understood they were attached to it but it just didn't register on my level.  As I was enjoying my game, I overheard them talking about putting her to sleep and how it would cost something like $75 for the visit alone and like another $75 or so to put her to sleep.  My logic wouldn't shut up, it kept screaming in my head "They want $150 to kill a cat?!?  That should be free, cats are everywhere."  So I walked back in the room, I had hatched a more economic plan for them.  I stood above all of their sad faces and said, "Listen, I'm not trying to be a dick about this and I'm really just trying to help but that's kind of expensive to put an animal to sleep don't you think.  So my idea was this, I'm not attached to the cat in any sort of way so I could just kill it for you all and I won't charge a dime to do it."  My sister in law looked at me with a look of hurt confusion and said, "How?"  I continued, "Well, I guess the quickest way would be to break its neck she would ...."  She said "What?  No, no, no, you can't do that.  You don't even know how."  True enough I am not up on my animal anatomy but I thought I could figure it out, so I offered my alternative which in hindsight sounds pretty bad but sounded like sound logic at the time, "I could just take a brick or heavy stone and...."  In unison everyone in the room shouted "NO!!"  My wife asked me what the hell was wrong with me and if I realized how crazy that made me sound.

I left the room with the offer still on the table and explained from a distance that I was only trying to help to which they explained if I was ever on my death bed and was hit over the head with a brick not to worry that they were just trying to help.  So apparently basic logic does not figure into putting an animal down.  I had seen enough Westerns to understand that if an animal was suffering that it had to be killed and they either shot the horse or hit it over the head with something heavy.  I had no gun nor any bullets so I thought a brick would be the answer.  But nay, I am a bad person, a shitty veterinarian, and the worst candidate for President of PETA.