Note to My Readers

I have mentioned before that my fifth book has been published on Amazon. All Kindle versions of my books will be available for free during the coming Labor Day weekend. With the exception of Lambs & Crab Legs, which is only available for free on Sunday. Links to those books are below.

Print copies are available for purchase on Amazon, also locally at Lillies and Lovelies on Long Street in Sweet Home, or by contacting me by email at d.e.larsen.dvm@peak.org.

1. The Last Cow in the Chute

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2. Widow Woman’s Ranch

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3. Lambs and Crab Legs

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4. The Daughter’s Horse

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5. The Making of a Country Veterinarian

tinyurl.com/5n87yebn

The Change of Life, from the Archives

D. E. Larsen, DVM

“Jim is out front and wants to talk with you about that radio transmitter tower that he was talking about yesterday, Sandy said. “He says he has some new information.”

“Jim, how are you doing today,” I said as I offered my hand to shake.

“Sandy says you have some more information.”

“Yes, I found a tower that we could lease space on for a repeater,” Jim said. “This is a hundred-foot tower on Marks Ridge, and we can get a space at the forty-foot level for twenty-nine dollars a month. That removes all the upfront cost for tower construction that I was talking about yesterday.”

“Jim, I know you are excited about this repeater, but I’m not sure that it will help me out a lot. For the initial expenses and then monthly tower fees, it just seems like too much expense for my needs.”

“Don’t worry about the monthly tower fees,” Jim said. “We will have plenty of people using the service to cover those costs. They will also allow us to repay the money you put out to get things started. And then when we are at full steam, we will have a steady revenue stream for income and to cover any operating and maintenance expense.”

“Check with me next week,” I said. “I am going to talk with a couple of the loggers and forestry guys around here to get a feel for their experience with the repeaters they use.”

“Okay, but don’t take too long to make a decision. I have to push ahead, and if I come up with another investor, I will have to go with them.”

“Don’t let me slow you down, Jim,” I said. “I have to be careful with my capital. A veterinary clinic in a small town doesn’t make a fortune.”

***

Every Tuesday, I attended a Rotary lunch meeting. It gave me a good break from the office, and I could mingle with other business people in town. This Tuesday, I grabbed a seat beside Jack. He would be the most knowledgeable about the use of radio communications in the area.

My experience in the Army was closely tied to radio and radar reception all over the world. I knew from that experience that the tower and repeater Jim was pushing would have definite limitations in the many little valleys around Sweet Home.

“Jack, I want to pick your brain a little today,” I said as I slid into the chair beside him.

“That might not take very long,” Jack said with a big smile.

“I have a guy wanting me to go in partners with him to install a radio repeater on a tower on Marks Ridge,” I said. “You have guys out and about all the time. What is your experience with radio reception around Sweet Home?”

“If you think you’ll have a functional radio connection with your office from a single tower on Marks Ridge, you’ll be disappointed,” Jack said. “We purchase usage on multiple towers around the area, many towers really. We do pretty well, most of the time, finding one that we can use. But there are areas that we have no reception. And that is with the use of many repeaters and multiple frequencies.”

“That is what I was afraid of when I was looking at the map,” I said. “Line of sight frequencies don’t tend to go through ridges very well. I think I will just have to continue doing things the way I’ve done them since I came to town.

***

It was some years later that the cell phone was thrust upon the world. The first models were large and cumbersome, and reception in the Sweet Home area was limited. But things progressed.

Bob Lester joined my practice for several years, and we needed to have a little better communication when on farm calls. Finally, Motorola came out with a handheld cell phone. It was still large but smaller than the old walkie-talkie that the Army used. It didn’t fit in your pocket, but it was functional for us.

***

Thursday golf was a big event for me most of the time. I liked it mainly because the phone never rang on the golf course. This one Thursday, Bob was gone, but I had this new cell phone.

Sandy came out of the office as I was getting in the truck to head to the golf course.

“You need to take this with you,” she said, holding the cell phone out to me.

“I guess it will fit in my golf bag,” I said as I took the phone and unzipped the side pocket of my golf bag. I switched the phone on and zipped up the bag, not giving it much thought.

The game went well. I golfed with the same group of guys most of the time. This week, we were in the Men’s club game and played a skins game amongst our group.

In our skins game, the skins that were not won on a hole carried over to the next hole. It was one tie, all tie game, and you had to have the low score on the hole to win the skin. This day, everyone was playing well, and when we came to the seventh tee, no one had won a skin yet. This hole was worth seven skins. At two bits a skin, this hole was worth seven dollars.

The seventh hole at Pineway Golf Course was a par three hole that played about a hundred and fifty yards to a small, sloping green. I hit a hard eight iron and stuck my ball about four feet from the hole.

Everyone was on the green, but I was closest to the pin. The others all putted and had tap-ins for their pars. I had the stage with the only realistic birdie putt.

I carefully addressed the putt.

“What is that,” Gil said as he looked around.

I thought he was trying to distract me from concentrating on the putt that was facing me.

“There it is again,” Jim said. “What the heck is it.”

Then it happened again. I heard it this time.

“It’s coming from Larsen’s bag,” Mike said.

Oh no! It was that damn phone, and it kept ringing.

“Just a minute,” I said as I walked over and unzipped my golf bag. I picked up the phone. The ringing stopped, so I returned it to the bag and zipped up the pocket.

“What’s that thing,” Jim asked again.

“It’s a new cell phone,” I said.

“You better get rid of that before it takes over your life,” Mike said. “We can’t play a game with that thing ringing in the background.”

I addressed the putt again, and the phone started ringing. I concentrated on the hole and stroked the putt. 

The putt broke to the right. The ball rolled up to the edge of the hole and seemed to stop for a moment. The phone rang again, and the ball fell into the hole.

“So that how it works, the damn phone pushes the ball into the hole,” Jim said.

“Seven skins,” I said. “Not bad with the phone ringing in the background.”

Everyone picked up their bags and headed for the eighth hole. I took the phone and called Sandy.

“I was just wondering when you were going to be home for dinner,” Sandy said.

Photo by Tyler Henry from Pexels.

The Male Calico Kitten

D. E. Larsen, DVM

The day was almost over when Vicki came through the door. Vicki and Doris made up the local cat rescue organization called KATA. KATA stood for the Kitty Angel Team Adoption.

“Doc, I have a couple of questions,” Vicki said as she walked into the clinic’s treatment area.

“Sure, what do you have?” I asked. “You picked a good time, and we are just cleaning up to close this place down for the day.”

“I have a lady who swears she has a male calico kitten,” Vicki said. “Have you ever seen one?”

“Nope, I have to admit I have never seen one,” I said. “But, they happen, and I have talked with people, professional people, who have seen several.”

“I am pretty excited about this,” Vicki said. “I have heard that they are very valuable.”

“How old is this kitten?” I asked.

“It’s only a few days old,” Vicki said. “The lady mentioned that he didn’t have his eyes open yet.”

“Have you seen this kitten?” I asked.

“No, I just talked with this lady on the phone,” Vicki said.

“Do you know how often I am asked to look at a kitten and tell people what sex it is?” I asked.

“I know; people always seem to have problems with that, don’t they?” Vicki asked.

“And not only in kittens,” I said. “RMM, Ralph M. Miller, DVM, was a veterinarian who started writing cartoons during vet school to earn extra money. He has many books published and is very popular among veterinarians. To really enjoy his humor, you almost have to be a veterinarian or at least have a close association with the profession. A lot of his cartoons display episodes that are almost universal to all of our experiences. In his cartoons, he had a society. The society of veterinarians who have spayed tomcats, or something close to that.”

“That’s funny,” Vicki said. “Is that something that happens?”

“If a veterinarian is conducting his practice like he was educated to do, it should be exceedingly rare,” I said. “But people get busy, and it is probably a common error.”

“How could that happen?” Vicki asked.

“People get a kitten and think it is a female,” I said. “They give it a female name, they present it to a busy clinic, the pre-surgical exam becomes just a glance over, and the sex of the cat is not determined until the surgeon can’t find the uterus in the abdomen. So he has someone check under the drape, and there are the testicles.”

“What are you trying to tell me?” Vicki asked.

“Don’t get excited about a calico male until you know for sure that it is a male kitten,” I said. “I would never believe someone’s determination of a kittens sex unless I knew that the person knew what they were looking at. And even then, I wouldn’t believe it for something like this until I saw it myself.”

“So you think I should bring it in for you to look at?” Vicki asked.

“I would look at it for you,” I said. “You surely have heard my saying before, but when you are in a barn and you hear hoofbeats, look for a horse, not a zebra.”

“Okay, it might take me a couple of days, but I will bring the kitten by for you to check,” Vicki said.

Several days later, I noticed Vicki sitting in the reception area with an older lady. The older lady was holding a towel bundled in her lap. I could only assume that a kitten was buried in that towel.

I motioned Vicki and her friend into an exam room.

“I am guessing now, but everything tells me that there is a kitten somewhere in that towel,” I said.

“Yes, we are worried about exposing this little guy to the clinic environment,” Vicki said.

“Kittens get their immunity from their mother’s first milk,” I said. “He is well protected.”

“This is the guy I was telling you about,” Vicki said as she dug into the tangle of the towel for the kitten. “I looked at him, and he sure looks like a boy to me. But we decided we better get your take on things before we start celebrating.”

I took the kitten, turned him around in my hand, and lifted his tail to get a good look at his plumbing.

“He is definitely a male and calico to boot,” I said. “That is interesting.

“I know you have a simple explanation on how to tell the sex on these little guys, but could you explain it one more time, just so I know if I’m telling people the right stuff?” Vicki asked.

“The problem people have is the testicles are so small early in a kitten’s life,” I explained. “So what you want to do is just look at the openings. If the two openings are close together, it is a female, and if they are spaced a half centimeter or so, it is a male. Otherwise, time will tell you as they get older.”

“And how valuable is this guy?” Vicki asked.

“I was wondering what you were celebrating?” I said. “The sad truth is he is a curiosity, and that is about all. When I was practicing in Washington, a doctor with the state hospital in Buckley had a research colony of male calico cats. He would purchase those cats. I don’t know what he paid for them, but I know he lost his funding for that project the year I was there, and that colony went away.”

“So the high value is an old wives tale?” Vicki asked.

“As far as I know, he has no special value,” I said. “I guess you could advertise him, but I doubt if you are going to get any big offers.”

“We’re not sure we understand how this happens?” Vicki asked. “Why are they so rare?”

“In the cat, color is a sex-linked gene,” I said. “That means that it is on the X chromosome. Females have two X chromosomes, so they can be multi-colored. Males have one X chromosome and one Y chromosome. If we are talking about yellow and black, males can be black or yellow, but not both in a mixture like on a calico cat. So to get a male calico cat, there has to be a non-disjunction, like we see with Down’s Syndrome. Only instead of the twenty-third chromosome, it is the X chromosome. Genetically, this little kitten is an XXY. In man, that makeup is called Klinefelter’s syndrome. But color is not sex-linked in man.”

“Is there anything we need to do with this guy?” Vicki asked.

“I think you want to neuter him when he is old enough,” I said. “Just treat him like a cat.”

“Is this XXY thing going to affect him later?” Vicki asked.

“Vicki, this is the first male calico I have seen,” I said. “I don’t have much of an experience base to draw a conclusion from. Other than a brief mention of the occurrence in school, it was never discussed. I am sure it was assumed that most of us would never see one.”

“So I guess we treat him like any other kitten,” Vicki said, looking at the old lady.

“And I thought I had a golden egg,” the older lady said.

Photo by Amy Larsen.