Prairie Landing
Friday, December 23, 2005
The vet: Pottery Barn meets Toone-town
I forget if I've mentioned my vet before. He got into some kind of dispute with the veterinary hospital and struck out on his own. As a result, the last time I went to see him it was in a single concrete-and-cinderblock room containing nothing but a metal exam table, a folding table with a laptop and a credit card machine, and a few folding chairs occupied by patients and their owners. The setup ensured a maximum of noise, since the yowling of whoever was being examined would set off all the other animals. Also the owners would make spectator-sport comments like, "Yeah, THAT's gonna be cold." So much for HIPAA.
He assured me that he was building a new hospital. What he didn't mention was that the construction would be in that very room. So today I went over there and was met with a handwritten sign encouraging me to pick my way through the scaffolding and Slavs with jackhammers, ending up, surprisingly enough, in someone's condo. Now, instead of concrete and folding chairs, there are all the trappings of Christmas in Lincoln Park -- blonde hardwood, stainless steel, and one of those open bookshelves from Crate & Barrel loaded with family photos and Hill's prescription products. Wandering around were 6 or 8 cats in various states of well-being, all the way from an arthritic oldster with renal failure to two hyper kittens wearing red-and-green feather collars. It reminded me of my friend Toone's house, happy home to a dozen or so kitties.
I like my vet a lot. He was the first vet ever to successfully treat G's stomach problems, plus he's always rattling off the latest studies from the University of Colorado or wherever. I can only assume that a lot of other people feel the same way -- not only because of his office vagaries, but also because it took some sleuthing just to figure out where he'd gone.
As your reward for reading that pointless description, here's a picture of the little bugger himself, on his leash:
He assured me that he was building a new hospital. What he didn't mention was that the construction would be in that very room. So today I went over there and was met with a handwritten sign encouraging me to pick my way through the scaffolding and Slavs with jackhammers, ending up, surprisingly enough, in someone's condo. Now, instead of concrete and folding chairs, there are all the trappings of Christmas in Lincoln Park -- blonde hardwood, stainless steel, and one of those open bookshelves from Crate & Barrel loaded with family photos and Hill's prescription products. Wandering around were 6 or 8 cats in various states of well-being, all the way from an arthritic oldster with renal failure to two hyper kittens wearing red-and-green feather collars. It reminded me of my friend Toone's house, happy home to a dozen or so kitties.
I like my vet a lot. He was the first vet ever to successfully treat G's stomach problems, plus he's always rattling off the latest studies from the University of Colorado or wherever. I can only assume that a lot of other people feel the same way -- not only because of his office vagaries, but also because it took some sleuthing just to figure out where he'd gone.
As your reward for reading that pointless description, here's a picture of the little bugger himself, on his leash:
