I had a health scare last week.

Not for me, for little Tippy, the youngest of my two cats. She’s a domestic short hair calico, a temperamental nine-and-a-half-pound fleabag who’ll rub up your leg for attention one moment, and hiss at you the next.

For the last several weeks, I’d been noticing an increase of cat vomit about my apartment. I cleaned it up to the best of my ability, chalked it up to whatever brand of food I was buying at the time, and crossed my fingers that the next brand I selected would ease whichever cat’s stomach wasn’t agreeing with what I was feeding them. And then early last week, I was home when I heard Tippy howl.

Cat owners know that cats can vocally express themselves several different ways: they can meow, that nice little polite “meow”, or they can whine, “mrrrrowl”, or they can even scream — as my older cat, Guy, did when he jumped off the bed … or rather, tried to jump off the bed, as his front paw was stuck in the afghan. Scream-scream. Like, “holy crap!”

But none of this compared to Tippy’s howl, which made me jump. And immediately after howling, she threw up: twice. But after that, she seemed recovered quite well, so I didn’t think a whole lot about it. I cleaned up the mess, I poured some cold water into the cat bowl, but it wasn’t until the following night — when she howled again — that I began to get scared.

I moved to DC almost two years ago. Both cats were up to date on their shots when I moved, so finding a new veterinarian wasn’t a priority. And as they’re both very healthy cats, I really didn’t give it much thought, until Tippy’s howling. I immediately went on Twitter and solicited vet recommendations. And pretty quickly, both on Twitter and Facebook, people responded.

Ultimately, based on a Twittersation with @Shaw_Girl (who blogs here), I opted to go with Dupont Veterinary Clinic, located on P Street just west of Dupont Circle. I called them Tuesday morning, and was able to arrange an appointment for that evening. While I considered taking Tippy on public transport, I ultimately decided to take a cab to and from. Truthfully, when transporting them by vehicle before, they’ve always cried and howled the whole way — I didn’t want to subject an L4 full of people to an upset cat. And while getting her into the cat carrier involved a considerable amount of effort — !!!!! — I was able to flag down a cab pretty easily.*

But that was later that day — after I’d been at work all day, after I’d gotten home and forced the cat into the carrier. Meanwhile, I spent all day googling “cat symptoms vomiting” and many of them were worst-case: “Cat dying.” You can possibly imagine how worried and scared I was feeling. And sick.

Also — wow! Was Tippy a good traveler! There was no hissing, and this little beast was eyes wide examining the world I take for granted. Sadly, no cute women told me what a cute cat she was, but she was a tiny little thing in a big blue box with bars.

We got to the vet’s without incident, and yes, I did tip the cabby quite well: I gave him $10 for a trip from Woodley Park to Dupont, and I think the meter fee was $6 or $7. We also got to the vet’s early, so I had a few minutes to wait, which was fine, because I had some forms to fill out.

In any case, before too long, a woman with pink dreadlocks took us into an exam room, where she had to coax Tippy out of the carrier which, considering how much the damn cat didn’t want to get in it in the first place, she was surprisingly reluctant to leave. But once out, she strutted her stuff and was quite happy and purring and getting scratched and loving it all …

… right up to the point she got stuck with the rectal thermometer, at which point her disposition went from “Excited! Curiosity run amok!” to “I’m gonna kill you both. Hiss.”

Not long after, Dr. Mitterman came into the exam room and used a stethoscope on the cat. Hoo-boy. Even though I don’t think the doc did any sort of anal probing, Tippy wasn’t much happier about being poked and prodded. Fortunately, Mitterman’s verdict was that Tippy was a pretty healthy cat, and wanted to do some bloodwork (to find out if perhaps she had kidney disease, or thyroid problems) and take some X-Rays (to see if something was physically wrong with her). I was totally all about those checks, so Tippy got loaded back into the cat carrier and taken upstairs and I waited in the lobby screwing around on my iPhone for a few minutes.

With X-Rays in hand, Mitterman summoned me back to the same exam room, and she pronounced Tippy in pretty good health (depending on how the bloodwork came back). She’d been concerned that perhaps the cat had swallowed some string which was causing her digestive troubles, but to be truthfully honest, once she said Tippy was in good health, I retreated to cat-lover’s-paradise and was just there long enough to miss the actual diagnosis.

Long story short, I left the clinic with Tippy in one hand (in her carrier); and a prescription bag of cat food in the other. In my coat pocket was a small jar of the feline version of Pepcid. Yep: Tippy had heartburn. Although I considered walking home, the truth is, I just wanted to get the cat out of the carrier so I could play with her. So I hailed a cab, and a few minutes later (after almost running over some pedestrians), we were home.

And Guy, poor cat, who was probably wondering what the hell was going on, jumped right off the bed and trotted over to greet Tippy as she emerged from the carrier.

And I’ve got claw marks up and down my arms, because every night I’ve got to load up this syringe/dropper thing with a certain amount of the stuff and shoot it into her mouth. She does not like it.

But she hasn’t thrown up for almost a week now.

***

The Clinic called me on Thursday. I’d provided both my cell and work numbers as contact. Because I’ve never set up the voicemail on my cell, Dr. Mitterman left a message for me on my office line (I’d already left for the day), to the gist of: “Bloodwork came back, she’s fine — no risk of thyroid or kidney disease.” This was a hallelujiah moment.

Tippy & Guy … Tippy’s not so happy about being disturbed. I like to call this the “she’s flicking me off” picture. Pawing me off?

I don’t quite know why she was so very still in this photo, or what she was looking at, but no, she was not stuffed.

In the carrier, enroute to the vet. This is either an expression of, “Why are you doing this to me?” or “I’m going to cut your throat.”

*True story: since moving to DC, I’ve taken a cab four times — once, when I was showing a friend around, and we wanted to get to the Zoo quicker than the Metro from downtown; once when visiting a friend out in Virginia, who lived a considerable hike from the Metro; and then twice more last week taking the cat to and from the Vets. This is probably a post in its own right, but long story short, I feel that they’re a waste of money. Take the bus, take the Metro, or walk. It’ll take you longer, but it won’t bite your wallet as much.