Skippers Post:

Did you know I have cats? I do! Two of them. Most of you have met Driftwood. He is white and black and fluffy. Mamba is black and little and slinky. The cats get a special food called “cat food.” It comes in two flavors, wet and dry. I like them both even though MelT tells me I am not a cat, and besides which, I am an herbivore. Whatever.

My cats are pretty good about sharing their food, it’s MelT who is the problem. She got these gates that go in the doorways and keep me from getting to the cat food bowls. Sometimes she leaves the gate open though and I sneak in. It’s hard for a 130 lb rodent to sneak, but I do it.

Turns out, the cat food isn’t the only delicious part of the equation; the bowl is super fun to play with! And who knows, there might be a small morsel stuck in there.

Who would have known that a cat food bowl wouldn’t stand up to capybara teeth? Anyone. And it wasn’t tasty at all! Not at all! See that little bite I took out of it? It tasted terrible! Not only that, it got stuck in my teeth! And it was SHARP!

I didn’t know what to do! We capys don’t have hands so I couldn’t reach in there and grab it. Our tongues are much use either; they are made for bringing food in, not spitting it out. The only thing I could do was gag and slobber and push my paw up against my face. And panic! Mostly panic. I did some bleeding, too. That was for extra drama.

MelT panicked, too. It’s good to know that she can’t be trusted to keep her head in an emergency. You know how panicky she was? She didn’t take any pictures! That is a first, probably for her whole life, certainly for mine.

In her panic, MelT called everyone we know. Mostly people weren’t home, but Sheldon came, and Coral, and my new best friend, Nancy. (Nancy went to visit Jinxx with us, so you might remember her.) Nancy has a horse trailer and she has two friends, who are now my friends, named Jerrome and Barbara. (MelT says Jerrome spells his name weird, but it looks fine to me. I’m not a great speller.)

Did you notice in the photos above that I had my harness on? MelT has been tricking me into wearing it by giving me Temptations, an especially delicious type of cat food. There is another horrible thing that attaches to a harness: a leash. I am not good with harnesses but I am not going to have one thing to do with leashes! Not now, not never. But MelT hooked it on to my harness anyway. Then the five of them, MelT, Coral, Sheldon, Jerrome, Barbara, and Nancy (Is that five? Capys aren’t great with large numbers.) all herded me into that deathtrap of a horse trailer that my new best friend Nancy, who is on probation at this point, brought over. Do horses really go in those things? I can’t believe it.

Once I was trapped inside, Jerrome brought a bale of hay in for me and MelT to sit on. Here is the really awful part about horse trailers, they move. And not smoothly either! I had to get on the hay and stand behind MelT so she could hold me up. It was hot in there, too.

Finally we got to the emergency vet clinic. They opened the doors so that MelT and I didn’t die from the heat. Then we sat in the trailer for a long, long time. MelT got out and Jerrome took her place. He was nice. He pet me the whole time we were waiting.

I hope you don’t mind that this post is getting so long. The event is stuck in my little capy brain and it won’t come out, much like how that piece of plastic was stuck in my mouth.

Finally the vet came out. I got a little sting in the butt. After that things are a little blurry. I remember the vet put a tiny flashlight into my mouth and looked around. There was no piece of plastic. I could have told her that! I swallowed it. After consulting with Dr. Hoppes at A&M, they decided that eating plastic isn’t that bad for a capybara. Getting stuck in the teeth is though.

Dr. Floyd like me so much she took my picture. Actually, a lot of people at the vet clinic took my picture. Nancy took those last two photos because MelT was still having a breakdown.

I got one more sting in the butt and then we started the long ride home. By then it was night so it wasn’t as hot in the trailer but it was still bumpy and scary. When they opened the door back at our house, I was out of that trailer in two seconds! LIterally. MelT and Jerrome went chasing after me but I hid in my favorite clump of trees and wouldn’t come out. That was after I got my harness off, which seems to be something we all wanted.

Don’t worry, we’re almost done. The last little bit is about my milk. It has been tasting a little stranger than usual since we got back from the vet. A bit spicy. MelT said it is because it has medicine in it, antibiotics and anti-inflammatories. That’s a lot of “antis”. I hope they aren’t anti-me.

If there’s one thing I like even better than cat food, it’s my milk. I don’t care if it is sharp. Milk is one of the very best things in the world.

By the way, MelT says she is going to explain why my milk is green in her next post. Isn’t milk always green?

Wow! That was my longest post EVER! Have any of you ever been to the vet? Did you have to ride in a horse trailer? Did you get little stings in your butt? Was it because you had a piece of plastic stuck in your teeth? Do you love milk as much as I do?

That list of questions is almost as long as this post! I bet you can think of at least one that you’d like to answer in a comment.