Pimento's Big Day

Today Hubby Tony and I took our foster cat Pimento to the vet for annual shots.

In the three weeks Pimento has lived with us, he's settled into a predictable pattern. Most of the day he shelters under the daybed cover in the office. When Tony and I go to bed, the cat has moved to stage himself behind the trundle bed mattress (probably so he can get a fast start on eating and using the litter box after we turn out the lights).

Given that Pimento is already somewhat secured under the cover I figured it would be relatively easy to get him into a carrier for the trip. The plan was to close the office door and have Tony to sit on one end of the bed to lift up the cover so I could grab him. However, in the morning we discovered Pimento had mixed his routine up and was hunkered down behind the bed.

Putting him into the carrier turned into a five-minute slapstick of pulling out the bed frame, Pimento sliding underneath the trundle, and scampering around the room in an effort to elude us. He even jumped into an open window and tried to climb up the screen in the gap between the glass and the screen before I was able to extricate his claws from the screen mesh and grab him.

The animal hospital the shelter uses was a thirty minute drive from the condo. The arrangement is for the vet to do shelter work during breaks or any free time, so we dropped Pimento off at 8 am. The receptionist said to expect a notification sometime between 12 and 2 pm letting us know to come pick him up, but to call if we hadn't heard anything by 3 pm.

After leaving the clinic, the next stop was at his previous foster's house to return a sweat shirt she had left in his cage when we made the transfer. We chatted with her for a few minutes and learned some interesting tidbits that explained a lot. She told us that Pimento has a small tip of his right ear gone, which indicated he had gone through a Trap, Neuter, Return (TNR) process. Along the way someone recognized he had the possibility to be someone's pet and contacted the shelter. She had done her part to help socialize Pimento, but when her work schedule changed she realized he would benefit from someone who was around the house more and turned him over to us.

The pickup went smoothly. In addition to his shots Pimento had his nails clipped. After his rough day he fell asleep in the carrier on the ride home. Tony set the carrier down in the office and opened the door. Pimento was thrilled to be back home.  

At bedtime we couldn't find Pimento in any of his usual spots. Tony discovered him under our bed, scrunched up against the headboard wall and as close to the middle of the queen sized mattress as he could get. I'm sure he felt safer there, but I was excited to see he knew enough about other parts of the house to choose a new place.