[1214] Tooth And Nail

I’m in a bit of a weird space.

This morning, like I have for many months, I went outside to feed a neighborhood cat. I’ve spent over a year endearing myself to him, leaving food in my field before he would dare approach. He inched his way as time went on, to now he rubs against my leg and waits by the door. I’m fairly certain he’s the father of 2 kittens my friend decided to adopt recently. He and one of my other cats will, somewhat routinely, fight when I go to let mine outside. My cat started as an outdoor cat who was considerably more trusting and agreeable when he randomly showed up 5 years ago.

Today, this cunt bit me. He bit the top of my foot in such an aggressive and cartoonish way I imagine it’s what a director of a movie would describe he needs to see so it plays right on camera and you know who he bit got fucked up. I had already put the food down and wasn’t even moving the foot in some kind of accidental provocation situation. I go inside and proceed to get scolded by AI over my handling of how to treat the wound, and he does the cat thing where he pretends we’re all good and rubs against the door frame.

I proceed to the nearest ER, because I live in the middle of nowhere, so Putnam County Hospital it is. There’s a lady at a welcome desk who I tell I’ve been bitten. She makes a very confused face and then asks me, I kid you not, “So, what do you want to do?” Bitch, I’m at the doctor, you fucking tell me.

She proceeds to tell me the walk-in clinic no longer exists at that location and is up the road now a part of the YMCA. In my attempt to, I guess, figure out what I want to do, I ask her if she has any remote idea how much it would cost to just get serviced here. She points me to the billing department behind her. I tell them my situation and that the front desk woman said they’d be able to ballpark me. They say, “Well, it depends on what needs to be done.” No fucking shit? 8 people behind 8 computers and 1 asks another she’s on a video conference with who says, “It could be anywhere from $2,000 to $5,000.” I leave, narrowly avoiding verbally berating a series of confused middle-aged country Whites.

I proceed to the walk-in spot. Naturally, their system can’t find me and my issue is lower priority than 7 people who walked in after me. There’s a standard procedure for this kind of thing, so I get a shot, a new bandage and cream, and two prescriptions. They have me reach out to animal control, which doesn’t exist in my area, and the health department. No one seems particularly worried about rabies in this area, so it’s monitor and report and don’t bother trapping the cat. All told, about $400. Eerily close to the amount of money I’ve wasted on less reasonable things relatively recently.

I missed work. My foot now is beginning to throb. I’m navigating work chats about entitled and aggressive IOP clients while simultaneously am planning and organizing a step-down house.

The parallels feel striking. I get cat who I’ve spent a considerable amount of time courting, rewarding, and responding to and yet for seemingly no reason, acted on instinct and bit the fuck out of me. I feel my stomach drop at the prospect of punting him across the yard in retribution. I have clients, arrested in their development and acting on insecure instinct lashing out over the program expectations. You can spend years of your life learning how to teach and address their issues and any given day be shit on “because.”

Can I afford the doctor’s visit and medication? Not really. Not in a way that keeps this is the realm of “mild inconvenience” versus “another mark on existential crisis Bingo.” But I can’t afford the doctor in the same way I can’t afford my concerts, most-expensive Belgian beers, T-shirts, car repairs, debt payments, tools, or anything I’ve bought my entire adult life what wasn’t Ramen, in bulk. I can’t afford it because I’m not in a system that is designed for me to afford it. I’m extracted from. My fear of the worst consequences of being bitten is leveraged.

The great irony of designing a system that genuinely is concerned, informed, and trying is that it will be treated like just another that isn’t. Our broadest cultural context is of greed, pride, waste, abuse, excuses, “it is what it is,” single-issue ignorance, ideology, and general standing hatred. How could you believe, in your heart of hearts, that anything isn’t out to kill you? This is any wild animal’s instinct, not least of which because it’s true. Then, when I punt it across the field, welcome to your self-fulfilling prophecy.

You can’t treat clients like wild animals, but you’d be stupid to characterize much of their behavior as anything more complicated than that. I know a cat can’t be held accountable and anything I do for or to it is about me. At a certain point in our discourse, I’m going to feel inclined to blame you for being a bitey cunt.