A Kitten’s Tale

D. E. Larsen, DVM

I noticed her sitting in the far corner of the reception area, patiently waiting for the crowd to clear. She was an older lady with white hair. She was short and petite, and well dressed for Sweet Home. She was tanned to a rough brown, and her face and hands showed the wrinkles that came from years of outside work.

My curiosity was getting to me. I stayed up front to see what she was going to want.

“Ma’am, is there something that I can help you with?” I asked.

She approached the counter with slow, measured steps.

“Are you Dr. Larsen?” she asked. “I have heard a lot about you from my friends. I am June. I have a small place up on 43rd. My husband has been gone for several years now. It is just my cats and me now.”

“Yes, I am Dr. Larsen,” I said. “I hope that your friends said good things about me.”

“Oh yes, Doctor, you are well thought of by most people in town,” she said.

“So, what is it that brings you to see us today?” I asked.

“If I had a kitten that needed its tail removed, is that something you could do?” she asked.

“Yes, we do just about anything here,” I said. “What happened to the kittens tail?”

Ignoring my last question, she continued. “And how much would such a procedure cost?”

That depends on how large the kitten is and if the tail problem needs any additional treatment,” I said. “If it is infected, there might be charges to take care of that infection. That is something I could give you a close estimate for when I look at the tail.”

“I mean, if there is nothing wrong with the tail, how much would it cost for a 3 day-old kitten?” she asked.

“You’re asking about docking a kitten’s tail?” I said. “That is not something that is done in most cases.”

“You dock puppies tails,” she said in a matter of fact voice. “There can’t be much difference, most of those pups have no real reason to have their tails docked.”

“You make a good point,” I said. “Some breeds need their tails docked, others it is purely cosmetic, or for some breed standard. If you have ever lived with a Cocker Spaniel in a Western Oregon winter, you would understand why we dock some tails.”

“I don’t see a difference,” June said. “I have a litter of kittens, five of them, that I would like to have their tails docked.”

“I would have to think about that one,” I said. “You are asking me to stretch my ethics a little.”

“Now listen, young man,” June said in a stern voice. I wondered if she had been a school teacher in her day. “There are not many options for these kittens. Placing kittens in homes is difficult these days. All my cats are fixed, but this little mamma cat shows up and has this litter of kittens in my woodshed. I can leave them there and let them grow up wild. They will probably die from distemper next year that way. Or I can find them homes. If a kitten doesn’t have a tail, it is easy to find them a home. I never call them Manx, I just say they don’t tails. My husband used to cut off the tails with his pocket knife. Now I need you to help these poor little kittens find homes.”

“What do you tell folks when they try to breed these kittens, expecting to get kittens without tails?” I ask.

“That only happened once,” June said. “Most people have them fixed like I recommend. That one time, I just said, what do you think I am, some sort of a geneticist. That word shuts up most folks around these parts.”

“You win the argument about the ethics of tail docking,” I said. “I am not comfortable with you deceiving people about what kind of cat they are getting.”

“So you would rather I got the neighbor boy to put them in a gunny sack and drop them in the river?” June said.

“Okay, I will dock the tails for you if you get it scheduled before they are 5 days old,” I said. “But, if any of these kittens end up here for their shots or to be fixed, I will not be a part of your deception. If asked, I will tell the truth.”

“I see, you would rather have them search for a real Manx kitten,” June said. “Half of which will have bowel and rectal problems for their entire life. Many of those will not reach adulthood. My kittens save a lot of little girls a lot of heartaches.”

“Your husband must not have won many arguments,” I said.

June had the kittens in the next morning. The procedure was brief, I prepped the tail, snipped the tails with scissors and closed the wound with a drop of Nexiban surgical adhesive. The kittens were asleep before they left the office.

I didn’t charge June. I felt her intentions were sincere. In those years, I donated a lot of services to the humane society. June was serving in the same capacity. I only hoped that the humane society didn’t get wind of her philosophies. 

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That Last Glass of Milk

D. E. Larsen, DVM

Dad came through the kitchen door with a bucket of milk fresh from the morning’s milking. The kitchen was the center of life in our modest farmhouse. The kitchen was not only the source of food, but it held the wood stove, which was the only source of heat in the house. Mom ruled the family from the kitchen.

All life entered through the kitchen door, the back door to the house. The front door was used only to access the front porch on rare occasions or during the summer when we boys would sleep on the old bed on the front porch.

Mom kept 2 large pans of milk on the bottom shelf in the refrigerator. She would allow the cream to rise to the top 24 hours before skimming the heavy layer of cream off the top of the milk. Living on a Jersey dairy, the raw milk contained about seven percent butterfat. We always had an ample supply of cream. It was used for whipped cream, for topping on desserts, like pies or berries, and any excess was churned into butter.

With three growing boys in the house, plus Mom and Dad and a sister, we would go through at least 2 gallons of milk in a day. We laid down a lot of calcium in our bones. It was rare for anything other than milk to be served at mealtime.

I grew up on raw milk. But that was a different time. In those days, a calf was born on the farm, grew up, and had calves on the same farm. It was a rare event for an outside cow to be brought into the herd. Herds were routinely tested for Brucellosis and TB. In such a closed herd environment where the milking was done by family members, and it was handled properly, the risk to the family from raw milk was very slim.

That is not the case today. Routine testing is no longer done because those diseases are rare. Other organisms are transmitted in raw milk, usually from poor sanitation or handling. Some microorganisms can be present in raw milk coming from undetected mastitis in a cow. 

Closed herds are as rare as the small family farm. When I was growing up, a herd of 50 or 60 milk cows was a large herd. All the cows had names, and I could recognize each cow by her udder. Today, a small herd is 400 or 500 cows, with large herds numbering in the thousands. Milkers are hired regularly, often with a questionable experience base. Diseases in the milking cow may or may not be detected on a timely basis. Raw milk scares me today.

When we got a new load of alfalfa hay, the milk’s flavor would be different or a time. Actually, probably just different, and it would take us a few days to adjust to that change. Then in the winter, when we would switch back to grass hay, there would be another period of adjustment.

When I joined the Army, one of the most surprising things was the variety of beverages offered at mealtime. I always chose to drink milk, not because I didn’t enjoy the other drinks, but because that was what one drank with a meal.

When I went to Korea, things were a little different. The Army shipped milk to Korea as a powder. They had a large plant in Seoul that reconstituted it. Then it was distributed to all the mess facilities in the country.

I almost gagged on my first glass of milk in Korea. The reconstituted milk was terrible. Worse than the milk from the worse truckload of alfalfa at home. But it is hard to change a farm boy’s habits. I gagged the stuff down, and after a few days, my taste was adjusted, and it was fine. I drank milk the entire 13 months I was in Korea. With some of the long hours I was on duty, I also learned to drink coffee. But that was only on duty, never with a meal.

Then comes one of those moments that changes one’s life forever. It happened at the Seattle Airport. Our flight back to the States was a long one. We had 13 hours of flight time and crossed the international dateline. We arrived in Seattle at 10:00 AM on the same day that we had left Korea on at 2:00 PM.

A group of us from the same unit were on the plane. We sat down for breakfast at the Seattle Airport while we waited for our flights back home. I ordered milk. After drinking the Army’s reconstituted milk for 13 months, this real stuff was awful. I couldn’t gag it down. So I had coffee instead.

That inability to handle milk continued through my leave time at home. Then I headed to Germany to finish my enlistment. In Germany, I was stationed in a small town, Schöningen, and lived away from the regular Army installations. I guess there was milk available, but I drank either coffee or beer with my meals.

That last glass of milk at the Seattle airport was the last glass of milk that I ever drank or tried to drink.

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One Needle Poke Or Another

D. E. Larsen, DVM

Critter was Karen’s problem child. He hated the clinic. And he was almost impossible to control on the exam table without the help of Karen.

Critter was a Sheltie. He was well cared for, and Karen and her family thought the world of him. It helped that he was on the smallish side for a Sheltie, but even the small dogs were difficult to control if they were convinced that you would do them harm.

With both Karen and Ruth struggling to control Critter, I worked through the exam as fast as possible. Getting a worm pill down him was a little like feeding an alligator, all teeth and jaws were snapping. The little plastic pill gun saved my fingers but suffered some fatal bites.  It would have to be retired. Then came the vaccination. There was real fear in Critter’s eyes as he eyed me out of the corner of his eye.

“Make sure that it is Critter that gets the injection,” Karen said. 

“Yes, that would be an unwelcome ending to this ordeal,” Ruth said.

“Let me tell you a little story,” Karen said. “Just to justify my concern.”

Karen was not much larger than Ruth. She was a nurse at the Lebanon hospital. Her short dark hair had a few streaks of gray, but she was probably close to my late 30s.

“I was getting ready to flush a catheter in the hospital one afternoon,” Karen said. “The patient was not as bad as Critter, but he was a little jumpy. Just as I had the needle to the catheter, and he jumped. Not a little jump, he really jumped. The needle and syringe flew into the air. Instinctively, I reached out and caught it. The needle pierced two of my fingers. I was lucky that it was a sterile needle, and not much came of it. Not much except for a hole through two fingers. I think about that every time I flush a catheter now.”

“I have to admit, Karen, that I poke myself every once in a while,” I said. “But, I have never stuck a client.”

With everything completed with Critter, I set him on the floor and watched him dance around, happy as could be. He took a treat from my hand, a completely different dog.

“I was going to see if you guys would clip his nails,” Karen said. “But I think he can only tolerate so much at one time.”

Ruth smiled, “I think he is not the only one who can only tolerate so much at one time.”

“So now, before you go, I have to tell you a real needle story,” I said.

“You probably work with some large needles when you work on those cows and horses,” Karen said. 

“I was working a herd of cattle, doing pregnancy checks, and doing some booster vaccines at the same time. In the 1970s, we commonly used automatic syringes when working a herd. I never liked them and seldom used them, but it allowed me to work a little faster. Pregnancy checking with my left hand in a sleeve and using an automatic syringe in my right. I would work several cows before changing sleeves and refilling the syringe.”

“That sounds like it would be difficult to keep everything clean,” Karen said.

“Yes, I could do three or four cows and then stop to clean up,” I said. “For some reason, I was working by myself, I am not sure I remember why.”

These pistol grip syringes were large, chrome, and glass syringes. The handle allowed you to stick the cow with the needle and pull the trigger to administer the vaccine. The benefit was not having to load a syringe with each dose.

“I was using needles that were one and a half inches long and 16 gauge. That allowed less resistance to the plunger. And I would change needles every time I stopped to clean up. So a needle would be used on three or four cows.”

“I had been working most of the afternoon, and I was probably tiring a little,” I continued. “But as I neared the end of the herd, I tried the hurry along a little. I checked this one big old Brahman cross cow and injected her with my right hand, a subcutaneous injection, behind her right elbow. I turned back toward the table to get ready for the last few cows. As I turned, I sort of let the syringe swing in my hand. When I stepped with my right leg, I buried that 16 gauge needle to the hub into my right thigh.”

“Did you inject yourself?” Karen asked.

“No, I would have really had a problem had that happened,” I said. “It was a clostridial vaccine for subQ use only. As it was, I had one sore leg for a few days.”

“I would guess you made some changes after that,” Karen said.

“I had been looking for an excuse to get rid of those syringes for some time,” I said. “They were becoming a thing of the past with all the single-use products coming into use. That was the last time I used them. And the last time I worked a herd without some help.”

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