Gnawed by Doubt During Termite Scare
We are no longer tenting tonight. We are back in the house after having been away two days and one night while the termite crew draped a large orange-and-black tent over the house and about 2 feet of ground around it. We used to have a mint bed large enough to supply all the juleps served at Churchill Downs on Derby Day. Now we have just enough for one abstainer who might want a very small sprig of mint in his iced tea.
During the spraying, Peaches stayed with her friends Coco and Bon-bon Brassell in South Pasadena. They are chocolate-colored poodles who are blessed with owners who don’t mind if the ebullient dogs have an occasional house guest.
Patsy and I stayed at the Kipnises, that’s Gil and Miriam, who are neighbors as well as friends. They were in San Francisco, which made everything easier for everyone.
I don’t know why I wanted to be close to the house. I couldn’t have done anything about it if it had exploded, or, perhaps, floated away into the sky like the Great Pumpkin.
Now, I will tell you about Mrs. Goldfarb, the aged white cat who was to stay with us for six months seven years ago. She spent the night of the termite tenting at a veterinarian’s in an adjoining suburban town where she was to have a flea bath and have her shots brought up to date. The last time the old girl had shots, she shared a cage with Dick Whittington’s cat in London. This is a very aged cat. She never leaves the yard and only goes out to the tabby’s room, or to take a siesta on top of the petunias in the half barrel.
She was perfectly composed on the way to her hospitalization, simply curling up on the front seat. This poise is probably the result of spending her hazardous kittenhood with four active children and three large Samoyeds. As far as Goldfarb is concerned, anything less than the Chernobyl disaster is a day in the country.
Patsy took her in wrapped in a sweat shirt so she would have a scrap of home in her cage with her. When Patsy came back, she said: “The doctor says that because of her age, he cannot see that she is bathed unless he does a blood test and the results won’t be back until tomorrow. And besides, he wants to check her liver.”
I screamed, or as close as I come to it with my gentle upbringing, “Why in the world is he checking her liver? If she’s as old as he thinks she is, what does he do if the liver is ailing? Put her down for a transplant?”
Patsy shrugged, which is what we both have been doing a lot of since the termites were discovered. Ever since that horrible day, we have felt ourselves in the grip of some evil power, swept along by a river of no return. Mrs. Goldfarb’s liver was just one more stitch in the tapestry.
The next afternoon, we went to pick up Peaches, who had had a wonderful night with her friends, telling ghost stories and eating fudge.
Then we went to pick up Mrs. Goldfarb. Patsy went in to get her and came out in about 10 minutes. She thrust Mrs. Goldfarb and the sweat shirt at me and said, “Here. You get to hold the solid gold cat. She’s still a little goofy.”
I kindly did not ask her how she could tell and then I asked the price. Patsy handed me the bill. There was the lab work (the liver and the blood) the bath, cleaning her teeth and a tooth extraction.
The bill was closer to $200 than $100. The overnight lodging was about what you used to be charged to stay in a more than adequate hostelry.
Patsy snarled at Mrs. Goldfarb, “OK, Mrs. Goldfarb. Let’s see you smile and they’d better be white and pearly.”
When we reached home, the tent was gone, but there was an odor in the house that would have stunned an ox. We ran from room to room, throwing open doors and windows and spraying every room with all the expensive room sprays, including the Christmas ones. Pretty soon, the living room was habitable and smelling of a spray called the Fragrance of Yuletide. It was like being in the middle of a plum pudding with cloves up your nose.
The rest of the evening and the next day, I spent with my essential aide, David Steinbacher, and a patient woman and friend, Laureene Williams. Among us, we unloaded the groceries, liquor and medicines from their taped double-plastic bags and put them away after cleaning more shelves than I know we had.
Patsy had a horrible cold during the entire time and coughed with a vigor that I’m sure was recorded on the seismograph at JPL. Remember Sgt. Preston of the Yukon and his wonder dog, King? Patsy sounded like King, especially when she discovered that I had placed the sack with the molasses and the syrup and things like that in her trunk. All that spilled in her trunk were two bottles of molasses, one dark and one light. Nothing, really, to bark at.
Mrs. Goldfarb’s liver? Superb. We should all have Mrs. Goldfarb’s liver.
