The Village Vet by Woodman Cathy

Author:Woodman, Cathy [Woodman, Cathy]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781448106332
Publisher: Random House UK
Published: 2012-04-26T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

Lonely Hearts

I’M BACK AT Otter House one morning with Tia and Teddy, beginning to feel as if I’m spending more time at the vet’s than I did when I worked as a vet nurse.

‘Hi, Tessa. Can’t you keep away?’ Maz jokes, as she calls me into the consulting room. ‘I hear the Fun Day was a success. I’ve had several clients talking about it.’

‘We raised some money, but we didn’t rehome any of the animals. Mind you, who would want to rehome Teddy and poor old Tia here?’ She has a second ear infection now, on top of everything else, and whenever she shakes her head, she leaves a trail of brown spatters – at first I thought it was gravy – across the freshly painted walls. Cuddling up with her is like snuggling up with a well-loved yet musty teddy bear.

‘I don’t know what to do with her.’ I stroke her as she stands trembling on the consulting-room table.

‘We’ll get that ear cleared up. Somebody will come along. Give it time.’ Maz kisses the top of Tia’s head. ‘Does she mind being in a kennel?’

‘She hates it – I’ve never seen a dog so depressed. I’ve taken pity on her, and she’s living in the bungalow with Buster, who seems happy to coexist with her as she’s no threat to him whatsoever.’ I grin. ‘I’ll have to put a limit on my compassion though, otherwise there’ll be so many dogs indoors I’ll have to move into one of the kennels myself.’

‘Have you thought about doing a golden oldie offer? You could say that Talyton Animal Rescue would pay a contribution to her vet bills once she was in a new home, because they’re only going to escalate. That might tempt someone to take her on,’ Maz says as she looks down Tia’s ear and gently cleans it out.

‘It’s worth a try. I’ll work out the relative costs of keeping her long-term at the Sanctuary or paying towards her bills later on.’

Maz squirts ear drops down Tia’s ear and massages it for a moment. When she lets go, Tia shakes her head, covering Maz’s paw-print top with yellow splashes

‘Spot the deliberate mistake.’ Maz chuckles. ‘I should have held on to her head for a bit longer. Keep those drops going in for a few days and bring her back on Monday.’

I lift Tia gently down to the floor.

‘Who’s next?’ Maz asks.

‘Teddy.’ I let go of Tia’s lead and let her wander around the consulting room, sniffing at the cupboards – searching for food, I imagine – and bumping into table legs, while Maz takes a look at Teddy, who, since the abscess cleared up, has acquired a skin infection under his neck.

‘That’s nasty,’ Maz comments. ‘I’m going to prescribe more antibiotics, but I’d like to take some blood to test for the feline leukaemia virus and the feline immunodeficiency virus if that’s all right with you. Hopefully he’s negative, but I think we need to know what we’re up against.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.