in the poker game of misfortune, we acknowledge lmo‘s apartment fire with our own living room ceiling, which drips, peels and bulges with un-diagnoseable pipe leakage, causing our manager to threaten Brazil-like reconstruction and the seizure of our living room, and we raise her one late-night trip to the emergency veterinary hospital.

at 2 am on a sunday night, the hospital waiting room was filled with pet owners whose pets had eaten mouse poison, paperclips, polarfleese. there were no kitty flues or kennel coughs, just grotesque emergencies of the intestinal track. one doctor poked his head out of the operatory to explain to the parents of a constipated cat that, “we’re doing the plumbing now,” indicating the angry snarls from within. a nervous poodle paced the waiting room while her seven puppies had traces of rat poison pumped from their stomachs. much to my relief, zeke hadn’t tied his intestines into knots around a twist tie, but instead had spontaneously developed a urinary tract infection. $226 + cab fare (bless you, cab driver who didn’t refuse to pick us up with our cat in tow) later, all was set right with a dose of antibiotics. if you’ve never seen a cat growl and hiss at his own genitals, well, it’s one of the stranger sights i’ve seen.