cATHEAD'S cRANKY wORLD

" Time for your annual check-up Cathead" keeper droned over The Guardian at his breakfast. He took another dip of bread crust into the boiled egg sitting in a little piggy porcelaine eggcup, wiped his chin with a napkin and stood up.
" Now where's your carrier Cathead, we can't be risking it with the leash on these busy roads".
Well thanks for the notice keep', I thought with a cat frown. Yeah the vets. Love it.

Thing is there's a new one opened just round the corner and I have a feeling he's going to try me out with that, I thought. I was happy with my regular vet Dr Doctor ( for that really was his real name, the humour in my cat brain offset the uncomfy investigation), he was kind and vegetarian and loved his work, compassion to all creatures great and small and feline.

This new vets though, it kind of gave me the creeps. One of those new modern efforts from a gutted out old pet shop on the corner. Money motivated definitely. Not a good sign with regards animal care that. Same thing as keeper constantly complaining about his dentist making up unecessary work on his teeth, calling it "precautionary" then wholloping him with a huge bill.

Anyways, too late, before I knew it I was being whisked, tinkering blue bell and all in the cat box across the busy road and into the new vets.
I sensed fear as soon as keeper sat me on a chair.
Not mine but a general ambience of apprehension from the other pets who had been there before me. I looked out through the mesh at the white-coated receptionist. Very hard features, businesslike and stern.
" Oh he's new, she said" as keeper explained about me. .." yes, he's registered over at Doctor Doctors in Croydon. " Oh Doctor Doctors, yes, she replied, her thin lips trying to suffocate a smile.

"What's his name . .oh Cathead " she said, reading the new patients form keeper had filled out.
" That's an unusual name. . .now, bring him straight though sir, Dr Animal will see him now.
Keeper laughed, " Doctor Animal, you're kidding me?"
" No sir, the receptionist replied, that's really his real name"

Before I had time to react I was whisked into the treatment room and my cat nose turned up straight away at the antisceptic stink of the place.

But then I knew. There he was, the one and only Doctor Animal, my nemisis from the animal lab days.
For he was the selfsame Doctor Animal ( could it be any other) who was employed by the animal lab to perform check ups on all us suffering creatures in our cages, every month. A tall, handsome early middle aged fellow with a high IQ but non-existent HQ (Heart Quotient)* One of those people who sail though life with no conscience, making stacks of money but no real friends.

Keeper was not to know. He let me out onto the inspection table. I looked up at DA. His eyes widened as he recognised me as missing from the lab. Missing presumed rescued. He said nothing except asking keeper to go back into the waiting room. So we were alone again, me and my old enemy from the bad old days. I eyed him unblinkingly as he tilted my cat head back to examine me.. . .
" Ah, we meet again little one" he said, very very wickedly.. . . .. . I felt no fear, my psychic overdrive was kicking in at the new challenge. ..
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PART TWO
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Dr. Animal, or Animal for short, had me gripped by the throat with one surgically gloved hand and prized open my cat mouth with the other. Then with a mini torch began scoping around whilst talking, he thought, to himself. . .

" Always wondered what became of you - my how you've grown since I saw you last. . ."
I eyed him carefully as you might do a dentist at a checkup.

" Same markings though, that half white moustache's a bit of a giveaway. . hmmm seems there are one or two cavities here. . ."
Don't think so Animal, my keeper kept me well away from sweets, kept me on the straight and kipper narrow. He's making excuses, I thought.

" Oh lets see how we're getting on on top "
He forced my cat head down to the treatment table and brushed aside the fur on the top of my bonce to the lump that was left from the drilling at the lab.
" Hmm, healed up nicely, but I think an X ray is a good idea to have a closer look ".

He lifted me off the table and put my head in a clamp type mechansism with my shimmery black body and tail sticking out - then walked out of the room and some funny buzzing noise lasted half a second and back in he marched.
" Right. . .." he picked up the clipboard to check my name. . ." Mr Cathead, I'm going to take a closer look at you now "

I knew this had nothing to do with an ordinary checkup because Doctor Doctor at the nice surgery used to simply feel me about a bit, do a couple of routine mouth and eye reflex tests and it was over in 10.

No, this guy was just too curious for my liking. He gathered the processed X ray pictures from the machine and stood in rapt attention and silence for a minute whilst I stood on his work bench.

" Jesus H. Christ, it's not possible. . . never seen anything like this! " he gasped.
Uh Oh.
He picked up his phone and dialled furiously. He started blabbing away to some colleague.
" I've just taken an X Ray of this cat, Charlie, you'll never guess what's on it, you'd better come round quick & take a look "

Animal had left the X Ray negs on their clip on the table. I only had to walk a foot and swivel my head around a little to see. Where my brain should have been there was nothing. Just a dark cavity.

Doctor Animal walked quickly back around the table and grabbed me tightly, lifted me and put me in another clamp device on another table, obviously designed for cats.

" Wow, this is amazing " he muttered excitedly.
I could almost see the pound sterling signs in his eyes at the thought of selling me back to the lab.
I could feel some power stirring within me. A heady mixture of anger and psychic force.

He began clanking around in his drawer of surgical instruments and brought out a whacking great hyperdermic. .
" Just going to sedate you little Cathead, then have a quick look back inside your head "

I quickly glanced sideways and saw he'd also removed a tiny drill from the drawer. A second thought flashed, hang on a tick, you haven't even asked my owner's permission to do this to me.

Keeper was sat back in the waiting room wading through Hello magazine whilst his fave pet is being lobotomized.

I struggled but the cat clamp was too tight. In sunk the needle and as he pushed in the sedative our eyes met again and the full force of the psychic power surged from nowhere. As if all the cries of fear and suffering of all innocent animals tortured and killed by the low HQ breed of humans was being focused back through me.

" Just count to ten, little Cathead. . ha, as if you can" " heartless Animal joked to himself.

OK, I thought, time for a different tack. I opened my cat mouth and spoke for the first time in front of a human being.
" One two three four five. . six. . seven.. ." not perfectly formed human words but distinct nevertheless, with a cat accent if you catch my drift.
The vet Animal was stunned, he stumbled back against the wall. .
" No, it can't be. .. .its not possible. . "
Thirteen fourteen, fifteen. . . . twenty. . " on and on I went. He stood in stupified shock.

The anesthetic was having no effect, my heart was racing, some great power was taking over my little cat body. I started shaking and trembling violently in the clamp.

Doctor Animal rushed over to the worktop and snatched the drill and fumbled underneath to plug it in.
" Whiiiiiiirrrrrrrrrr Whiiiiiirrrrr " he tested it.
He brought the evil machine to my clamped head as still I counted " thirty two thirty three. .."
" I'm going to find out the fuck what's happening here" he gruffed.

As the tip of the drill touched my cat head, all hell broke loose. The psychic power suddenly came rushing out through my mouth and I let out the most incredible cat screech anyone had ever heard I am sure. At that moment Dr. Animal cried out in pain and dropped the spinning drill on the floor.

" Ahhh my hand! my hand!" He was clutching it and keeled over in agony besides the still rotating drill. He rolled about in spasms of pain until one movement caused him to wedge the drill against his groin in the corner of the room. The drill kept whirring viciously.
" Ahhhh no, no, NO! "

At this the receptionist and keeper came bursting in and stared in shock at the scene. I decided time to stop counting. (I'd got to 58).

The nurse attended the vet who was writhing in a pool of blood on his floor whilst keeper unclamped me from the cat clamp table.
" What the hell are you doing to my animal !! " keeper blurted in rage. Doctor Animal was in too much pain to register keeper's angst.
"Ohhh no, ahhh, the agony. . .god help meee!"
Yes doctor I thought, that's what my little friends back in the lab cages were saying in their own ways, everyday of their short, tortured lives.

" Come on Cathead, lets out of here! "
He packed me away into the carrier and left the vet and his nurse to sort themselves out and marched me towards home real quick time.

As I swung from side to side inside the confines of the box I thought about what had transpired in that hell hole vets. The powers, they're getting ever stronger. My divine rage lets out with it some terrible destructive occult force - but only on the wicked it seems. I have to be really wound up for it to manifest.

But the thing about the empty cranium -as the heartless vet said, it's not possible that, is it?

Mmm, have to think about that one.

Yours lightheadedly,
CATHEAD

PS Returned to the scene today, dragging keepers digicamera to a hole in the hedge by the road to snap the vets. Just incase i go missing report this place to the rspca please my dear ones.
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