Wednesday I was supposed to have a doctor's appointment, and thank God they cancelled it due to retarded receptionists overbooking the poor MD. It meant HW and I got a chance to rest at home a bit before our usual Wednesday evening rehearsal, and the added fun bonus is that we detected Pete's issue before he got too sick.

I was sitting playing a video game, motionless but for my thumbs, unblinking and drooling, when I hear a caterwauling from downstairs that rouses me from my reverie. There's yowling and hissing and spitting, so I figure Pete and Veronichort are having a triple-X throwdown of some kind, and yell at them to cut it out. The unseen violence stops, and I go back to playing GTA: San Andreas, in which I believe I have killed 274 peace officers.

After a few minutes, the feline yelling began yet again, but this time Pete had come upstairs. I turned around to see what his problem was, and he was lying on one haunch, his legs splayed out, with his little thorny cat wang pointing at me and waving. He was alternating screaming at the top of his lungs with periodically reaching down to gnaw on his junk, and anytime any of the other cats went near him he hissed at them. (As a result, of course, the other three cats wouldn't leave him alone, and kept wandering over to see what the big deal was.)

So I went over and took a look at his "area," (©2002 Liz Hearn) and noticed that there was a small amount of dark yellow goo leaking out of it. This did not seem healthy, so I called our vet friend Tolly, who said, "Better get him to a hospital right away, he might be blocked up."

So we called Pike Creek Animal Hospital, and they said they could take him, so we stuffed him in a carrier (he doesn't like those; I'm still bleeding in a few places) and drove him over. The technician weighed him (almost 15 pounds. He's a monstrous animal), and took his temperature (rectally. He was absolutely THRILLED with this turn of events, but at least the temperature was normal). Then the vet came in and laid hands on him, pressing on the poor guy's belly to try and squeeze out some pee. She got a drop or two, but not much, and she said, "He's blocked. I'm gonna have to unblock him."

I winced a bit at this.

"Hopefully it's just at the tip, in which case I won't have to use anesthetic."

My first thought was, if anybody ever tries to "unblock" my junk without completely knocking me unconscious and supplying me with a minimum of 1000 grams of uncut heroin for my recovery period, I will plunge a scalpel into their taint, but I remained silent.

"If it's deeper," [big wince] "I'll have to knock him out."

Lovely. The technician brought us a form to sign (I honestly haven't the least clue what it says), and then picked him up, and he did his usual death-defyingly cute move of just flopping into her arms and resting his head on her shoulder. It was so pathetic, we almost got choked up.

Yesterday afternoon I called to check on him, and he still hadn't peed yet, so they wanted to keep him for more observation. Apparently he would sit in the litter box and just stare at the technician. I can't say I blame him though, since I would imagine trying to pee through his ravaged manmeat would be just about the worst pain of all times. So hopefully we'll hear from the vet this afternoon and we can go pick him up.

Everybody pray for the health of the wang of Pete, aka His Holiness Pope Peter II, aka Kreplach, aka Krepiss, aka Furdiß, aka Dog.