Column | Looking for Anna

Not so long ago I wrote a column about my cat that I could only get from under my bed for a treatment together with a veterinarian. You will have learned from that, the readers will have thought then. I have to disappoint them.

Last week my cat, called Anna, decided to give this story an unparalleled continuation, so unparalleled that I should not remember the readers of the time. Anna, a British shorthair, was once again as sick as a purebred cat but can be – in my experience, pure cats are much more often sick than cats of the garbage bowl.

What was going on again? An inflammation, perhaps even a tumor in the lower jaw, suspected my vet. She referred me to a dental disease specialized doctor in an animal hospital. He suspected an abscess in the jaw, luckily no tumor. The business had to be sucked under anesthesia, there was no escaping it if I wanted to prevent repetition. O no?, Anna must have thought, we’ll see that.

On the day of the operation I found my precautions as extensively as possible. Because my wife no longer lives at home and therefore cannot assist me, I cannot leave anything to chance. I closed holes under cupboards and chairs with everything that was available: pillows, shoes, clothes, books. My apartment eventually looked like a set of robbery robbers, led by Ridouan Taghi himself, had been looking for my supposed jewelry.

Every opening to freedom seemed closed. It was time to pick up Anna and to store it in her hermetically sealed travel basket. The taxi to the hospital was already arranged. Huppakee! In the kitchen I grabbed Anna, bent over her feeder, rather cross -border in the flanks. She looked at me for a moment and then turned smoothly from the game – Messi who gives Virgil van Dijk the check.

She jumped on the floor and hurried away, the corners, into the side paths. Where the hell had she gone? I sought the whole room thoroughly: the living room, the bedroom, the bathroom, the kitchen, the study room, the toilet, the mountain loft, the corridor, barely a hundred square meters in total. No mouse seemed to be able to hide there forever – but Anna did.

With growing despair, I crawled over the ground to lurk under bed or couch for the umpteenth time. Calling did not make any sense, but I did it, what remained different for me? After half an hour I stopped my pathetic attempts.

Down was the taxi below. I reported meek to the driver, a Turkish man who had driven me before. He heard me left. You could notice that in the Turkish countryside, where he was born, he had rarely heard of cats who did not want to go to the animal hospital. « The cat … well, » he muttered before he stewed away.

Inside I immediately called the hospital to unsubscribe. They reacted generously, I could get a week out. While I was still panting in a still -quiet living room, Anna suddenly came in, the tail raised lightly, as in a modest, yet proud triumph. It was clear that she would never reveal her secret.

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