A traumatic day for cats and taxi drivers

[quislibet]

To start the day, a trip to the police station to fill out some forms. For a long-stay visa for France, one requires a letter from your local police saying you're a good egg, or at any rate not a bad one. The forms I had to fill out to request such a letter (which are also good for firearms permits) were typed long ago, and badly photocopied many copy-generations previously at a crooked angle.

Then I returned home and puttered for a half hour or so until it was time to coax the cats into their carriers. Kitten fought tooth and nail (as a rule, one should eschew such trite expressions, but it well expresses the reality of the situation); Big One went right in, and then started to panic when I shut the door.

Then we waited for the taxi -- I have a perfectly good car in the driveway, and a perfectly good driver's license, but no insurance yet -- which was of course late; the cats didn't enjoy the wait at all.

I struggled in the meantime to fix the doorknob, which had come off the front door when I exited. I failed; I suppose I should attend to that soon.

At the vet's office, a few hundred dollars worth of blood tests and the microchipping required for taking the cats with us for France. That's a total of two microchips per cat, as the ones the vets implanted on a previous visit are not readable in Europe. They waived the costs of labor this second time around. The tests are not strictly required, but they might well become so by the time I leave in October, especially the one for rabies (which the EU randomly decided no longer exists in the US, and may well realize their mistake before autumn).

Big One was well behaved; Kitten freaked out and growled a lot. They were taken out of the waiting room one at a time; Big One could hear Kitten carrying on in the next room and ran back and forth agitatedly. Heart-wrenching stuff.

Despite clearly identifying the fact that I was departing from The Feline Hospital, the taxi company sent a driver who was fiercely allergic (apparently there's a big poster up in the cab office saying not to send this driver on cat-related missions, but to no avail). He drove us anyway, and I could see the hives popping up before my eyes during the brief ride. I gave him a big tip.

Comments

[kakoukorakos.livejournal.com]

Your geographical region may not have the same situation as mine, but in Colorado, vaccinating companion animals for rabies is about as silly as vaccinating children for smallpox. The cases of rabies discovered in ALL animals except bats (and this includes wild animals as well) in the past 100+ years amount to 12, if I recall correctly. But with the vigor vets continue to push the vaccines around here (as if we'll suddenly have an epidemic if the roughly 40% of people who actually comply with the laws and vaccinate their pets stop doing so, which leaves roughly 60% of pets and all wildlife unvaccinated, yet somehow still rabies-free), I wonder if there isn't similar foolishness happening in other states too.

[tefka.livejournal.com]

Its amazing where one can land when one starts hoping links :):) have fun in France.. I have no idea what your buttons say but am a fan of role playing just the same :)

[quislibet.livejournal.com]

Hello. It seems you are a friend of a friend of a friend. Neat.

[tefka.livejournal.com]

Yeah .. I lost track.. but I am here now.. will you be posting from france?

[quislibet.livejournal.com]

That's my current plan, although I have no idea yet what my net access will be like.

[tefka.livejournal.com]

Are you moving? Going alone? If I may ask. I mean you are taking the cats

[quislibet.livejournal.com]

My s.o. is studying there for a year, and the cats and I are going along.

[quislibet.livejournal.com]

Yeah, probably it's comparable. They've already been vaccinated fairly recently, but France may or may not demand a blood test to prove that the vaccine worked, or something.

I mean, sure, no one wants rabies...