Cool Cat!

Scooter, the neutered cat. "Hip spectacles. No testicles."
Created by Northlich.

Our public television station, WCET, has GiveThemTen.org as a sponsor of the PBS Newshour. Ten is a project that is fighting the problem of over-population of cats--it claims that a cat is put to death in a "kill shelter" every twenty minutes! We watch the Newshour most evenings and are therefore quite familiar with hearing that "Cool cats are spayed and neutered cats" after we hear other important views of the world. The tagline is part of a stellar eye- and ear-catching PR campaign that I believe has gone nationwide on much media--and worldwide through the Internet--but which I was proud to discover was created here in Cincinnati at Northlich marketing and advertising firm.

We had been reminding our little Guapa that "cool cats are spayed" every time we heard this or saw a picture of Scooter, the neutered cat, in his cool sunglasses and black turtleneck during the past couple of weeks. That's because she was approaching her six month birthday and had a date to keep to be spayed herself. Not surprisingly, she failed to appreciate the warning or the benefit.

 Cool Cat Guapa. ©Johannes Bjorner 2014

But spayed she was this past Wednesday morning. Both she and we survived. After we picked her up Wednesday afternoon and returned her to the house, she slept most of the remainder of the day, waking only to sip a little water drained from a can of tuna and lap up a few morsels of crushed chunk albacore. Then she slept again, and we watched her constantly to make sure she didn't lick her wound. She probably got more sleep than we did that night. Thursday she was ready to eat again, and had recovered enough so that we had to watch that she didn't jump too high and split open her internal sutures.

She is still much quieter than before the operation, but we are astonished at how quickly she seems to have returned to comfort, and without the pain medicine we had prepared. She still occupies much of our attention, and we are continually surprised--and only a little apprehensive--at seeing where she will appear next. She's one cool cat.