I am a bundle of stress today. 99% of it is directly related to Tora going to the clinic for her surgery tomorrow.

I’m stressed about having to drive to a part of town I have never been to before … during rush hour in the morning, and then again that afternoon. This is a valid stress. The clinic is way out of my normal sphere of activity on a strange little loop in the middle of nowhere. I have gone through the trip using Google Street View, so I am at least familiar with the area’s landmarks, but I do hate driving in places I have never driven before, and I have no idea what the traffic is going to be like. It’s only ten miles from the house, but rush hour in Austin is hell, and I may have to drive on IH-35, which I loath doing even when it isn’t stuffed full of cars. I may leave super-early and take non-highways to get there.

I am stressed about taking her to a non-profit clinic. No one anywhere has anything bad to say about them. From what I have read, they are awesome and wonderful people who treat both pets and their owners nicely. But still … I never like going to clinics myself, where you don’t know what doctor you will see or anything at all about the people doing the medical work. The same applies for taking my pets to vets. This stress is probably completely invalid. They have been around for ages, everyone raves about them, and they have been doing so much good work keeping lower income people with pets happy and their babies healthy (and not pregnant). Even though we paid a ton at the other vet, and they have beautiful offices in a nice part of town, in the end I wasn’t especially happy with both the quality of care or the attitude there. All the same, I keep having horrible thoughts that something is going to go wrong. Even if those kinds of thoughts are stupid, it’s hard to stop them from happening once they get into my head.

I am feeling the normal stress about being separated from my kitty. This is the dumbest stress of all, but the cats are my babies, so I am allowed to feel some separation anxiety! The good news is that unlike with the other two, she’ll be coming home the same day. I wasn’t at all happy about having to leave Ronin and Myu with the vet overnight after their surgeries. I couldn’t check on them, and even though the vet said they were OK, I had no way of really knowing that. The bad news is she’s going to be coming home the same day, which means she’s going to be totally out of it and in pain … and if something does go wrong in the first 24 hours, it’s going to be a crisis situation. But, we aren’t getting any more cats, so this will be the last time we have to go through this. I just have to buck up and deal with being without my baby for a day. Well, less than 12 hours, actually. It’s not that long!

I am also feeling stress about how to keep her from running around and being a holy terror while her stitches are healing. My plan is to set up some food and water in the bedroom (and a little litter box), and keep her in there with me, while Lin sleeps out on the couch with the other two. Then during the day, I’m just going to have to keep an eye on the critters. If the other two get too rambunctious, they’ll have to be sequestered in the bedroom. They won’t mind too much. They love the bedroom anyway. If Tora gets too crazy with the running around and jumping, she’ll just have to spend some time in the carrier sitting beside me. This stress is also most likely invalid. I have had oodles of cats in my life, all of them have gone through neutering and spaying, and not a one of them has ever had any problems at all not tearing out their stitches or getting an infection. Tora is such a sweet natured and calm little thing, I don’t think she’s going to be a problem.

All these stresses, silly and not, rolled up together make for one very stressed out Orb. Tora, of course, doesn’t know what’s on the horizon tomorrow, so she isn’t stressed out at all. I bet that changes lickety-split in the morning when I stuff her in the cat carrier and carry her to the truck! Poor thing. She’s going to freak out. Hope she doesn’t hate me too much!