I need some ideas on how to get my dachshund, Maccabee, to take his worm medicine. The cats were a lot easier to handle, relatively speaking.

First I picked up sweet, innocent, trusting Sasha, the Siamese. I had never wormed her, so she wasn't suspecting any skullduggery from the old man. Before I picked her up I put on a heavy, quilted coat and a pair of leather welder's gloves. By the time I put her down, I was wearing a light cloth jacket with pieces hanging down to my knees and half a pair of fingerless mittens. I should also have worn leather pants because my manhood is now seriously in doubt. The legs will heal, eventually. But she had "only" one pill to take.

I surveyed the battlefield while I got my breath back. Not a cat was in sight. Mac had a big, doggy grin on his face as he wagged his tail in approval.

Traveller wasn't too hard to find. He had hidden under the covers on my side of the bed and was frantically trying to burrow deeper, shaking the whole assembly in his efforts to get away. When I gently lifted him out and petted him and talked softly to him, he had this expression on his face like an innocent man going to the gallows. But he resigned himself to his fate and let me give him his nice pills.

Willoughby was another story. I located him perched on top of the china cabinet, but since I'm fairly tall, I was able to make a grab at him. He flattened his ears, switched his tail angrily, and began to hiss like an unfriendly teakettle. My first grab almost resulted in my being called Lefty for the rest of my life. The race was on.

Through the valley of the shadow of death ... no, sorry, wrong reference. About the third lap through the house I began closing doors and blocking catwalks until finally he was cornered. When I grabbed for him again, I suddenly found myself wearing a live cat-fur hat. An angry hat. A pissed-off, pussy-cat hat, and a lively one at that. Very lively. Snatching a lamp off the end table, I gave him a wallop the top of my head won't forget for a week, because he jumped off just as I swung. Maccabee was rolling on the floor by now, gasping for breath and begging me to stop before he wet his knickers.

Patty came in and asked if I needed any help. I just looked at her. "Willoughby," she said softly, "come here, Kitty." And the little &%^*(% jumped up into her arms. She gave him his worm pill and poked it gently down his throat, and he snuggled up to her and started purring! I was reaching for the lamp again when she asked if I'd wormed Mac yet. Mac and I both looked at her in disbelief. No, it hadn't even been mentioned.

Patty went to work, and I went to the store and bought the pills for Mac. But when I tried to give them to him, he just clamped his jaws shut. I couldn't open them with a crowbar. Now what? Anyone have any ideas? Please?

Copyright © David Yehudah
March 31, 1999