snaggletooth, that's who

I took the day off work to take Temecula to the vet (ah, the life of a single mom) to have her teeth brushed.

I know, it sounds ridiculous. But Washington Dog and Cat Hospital has a locked metal door that they have to buzz you through, and many of the dogs in the waiting room have ropes tied around their necks instead of leashes. In other words, I don’t think this vet would get much business recommending frivolous procedures. It’s not really a Tinkerbell crowd.

Mec-Mec is good about going to the vet, and good about many things. Before B and I adopted her, her rescuers named “Angel” because she was so good. That proved to be only half true—she’s good in that she doesn’t freak out the way normal cats do, doesn’t poo where she’s not supposed to, doesn’t have many nervous habits. But she knows how to cause trouble when she wants to. Just try telling her that she can’t play on top the cabinets above the sink. Her goodness comes more from her non-cat-ness. She is uber-mellow—even the vacuum cleaner doesn’t bother her until it’s 12 inches from her face. She is an indoor cat partly because I seriously doubt that she’d get out of the way of cars if she lived outside. She’d just be like, Huh, that New Jetta barreling toward me really is a stylish vehicle.

So it was no surprise that when I got out the carrier and opened the zip-top, she leaped right in, like, Okay, where are we going?

But her low-maintenance quality was not reflected in the $400 bill I received when I picked her up a few hours later.

“We had to do two extractions,” Dr. Horowitz explained. “A right molar and the right canine tooth.”

B and I used to call Mec-Mec “Snaggletooth” because, although she is a beautiful, blue-eyed white-and-calico-ish cat, one of her canine (feline?) teeth jutted out just slightly more than the other. And now she’s Snaggletooth for real. I couldn’t help but feel shitty, thinking, If only I’d given her more of those tartar control cat treats. If only I’d brought her in when her breath first started to smell like a decomposing corpse. But Dr. Horowitz assured me that it was mostly genetic, and that if I’d given her more tartar control cat treats, they just would have made her fat.

I’m supposed to be volunteering at the cattery right now, but I decided to stay home with my own little ones and make sure that OC is nice to his recuperating sister and that Mec-Mec feels well enough to eat. (I’m also really friggin’ tired. Am I using my sick cat as an excuse to ditch out of charity work? Some single mom I am.)

I needn’t have worried. Mec-Mec was barely out of her carrier when I heard a “crunch crunch” in the kitchen. I snatched the bowl of Max Cat Lite away and replaced it with a plate of nice soft tuna. She ate all of hers and then all of OC’s. A cat after my own heart.

So I ask you, who’s the most cutest kitty-witty in the world?