Dear Edgycat fans, In February of last year I ran away from Chicago. It was just too cold. I felt trapped in the house. My cat, Sally Cookie, felt that way too. Sally could not be left behind. She was ill, an illness with unpleasant symptoms. I couldn't ask anyone else to take care of her so I decided to take her with me to Berkeley, California. Here is our story...

3) Sally Goes to a Berkeley Vet

The radio blasts on: “19 dead in Kabul and Governor Schwarzenegger is raising taxes on visits to the vet.”

My 7:30 appointment is with the vet. I stand up and rush to the radio to turn off the bad news.

Sally doesn’t seem to be getting any better; she’s terribly thin but eats continually. Her Diarrhea is ever with us. I decide to take her to a Berkeley vet. The vet has enormous tattoos, and an odd accent. I read his bio in the office. He is Canadian, has an advanced degree in pharmacy and is a DVM. He sends for Sally’s records from Chicago. They arrive promptly: 25 pages. Everyone knows Sally Cookie at the Cat Hospital in Chicago.

He thinks her thyroid gland is greatly enlarged which explains every one of her symptoms and which has never been tested for. Could we be this lucky? Also, it can be cured with a wave of his tattooed bicep and a tiny pill, twice a day.

I’m a little fuzzy about the total cost of this visit, because I added another test after I paid for the office visit. I I think the total’s around $250. I feel like I just hold money for a brief period and then it belongs to someone else, probably they feel the same way.

I used to keep checks around for a few days before depositing them, just to get the feel of possession, but I stopped, it’s like trying to remember a sunset or the taste of rocky road ice cream on a hot day. I use various strategies to make myself feel in control of my money. I think, “Okay, this $250 expense is balanced by the cartoon I sold for $200 and another sale of two small drawings, or perhaps balanced by the $250 I didn’t spend on a new winter coat, having found one for $8 at the Roscoe Village Discount store. But yesterday I bought 2 kinds of eyeliner and mascara and something called “texture dirt” for my hair. It’s utterly hopeless. I will try to stop that kind of thinking. I’ll just live in the moment until catastrophe strikes.

Sally has lost none of her mental agility. After studying the gate across the kitchen entryway for a few days she made her move… Last night she flung herself against it, knocked it down and made for the newly upholstered purple couch in the living room, center seat. She’s probably been thinking about that couch and that center cushion for a week. She glimpsed it the first day she got here, when we allowed a supervised visit into the living room, and has been obsessing about it since then. She looks like she’s sleeping, but she’s really daydreaming of peeing on that cushion.

Join us for next week's entry, "The Canary in the Coalmine."