Here’s one from my senior year of vet school. Since the statue of limitations has (hopefully) run out, I’ll tell you that this cat’s name really was Rambo, and she earned it.
Hyperthyroidism is a disease of older cats, and Rambo had it in spades. It does some pretty interesting things to cats that have it: increased metabolic rate, insatiable hunger, weight loss, an exceptionally high heart rate, and personality changes that most often make even the most agreeable cats turn into monsters. Rambo had all of these symptoms.
To be blunt, Rambo was 5 lbs. of pure feline hatred. To make matters worse, she was radioactive. No, that’s not a joke.
To treat her condition, Rambo was given an injection of radioactive iodine, which kills off overactive thyroid tissue and leaves the cat with a normal thyroid. It’s very slick technology and highly effective. A few days after treatment, the radiation fades, and the cat goes home. Until then, everything in contact with the cat is treated as hazardous waste- paper in the cage, leftover food, and most especially anything that hits the litterbox.
Rambo was finishing up her treatment when my rotation group moved to radiology. She was assigned to a single student to expose as few people as possible to the radiation she was emitting. I was that student, and I was happy about it. As a student, you always hope to get assigned cool cases that are likely to have a positive outcome.
The professor in charge of the rotation caught me on the first day and took me down to Rambo’s room in the radiology ward’s isolation area. He hadn’t told me a lot about her, but I knew that something was up when he grabbed a pair of raptor gloves (very thick, elbow-length, and used to handle hawks, eagles, and other birds of prey) and a Geiger counter to measure radiation.
On the way down to the isolation room, the Geiger counter popped occasionally, catching stray cosmic radiation that’s around us all the time. As we got to the door it became a steadier stream of pops- a mix of cosmic radiation and the products of radioactive iodine decay coming from the cat that was now screaming and hissing at us from the corner. Rambo got so loud, in fact, that we had to leave the room so that the professor could finish giving me safety instructions before I started in…. it was earsplitting.
My job was to feed, water, give meds, and change the litterbox. I only had to do it for a few days until she was safe to be with her owner again. Simple, right? Well, it would have been except for one thing. I had to open the cage door to do it.
For the next two days, things went about like I was told they would. While I was working with her, she would occasionally charge across the cage and pound the raptor gloves, slapping with her paws, or gnaw on a finger until I could peel her off. It was stunning how fast that cat could move.
Her medication schedule was pretty rigid, and on a Saturday night, I found myself going back to the school at about 10 PM to give her meds and more food. There aren’t many people at the school at that time of night on a weekend. I became glad about that just a few minutes later.
As I walked into Rambo’s domain wearing shorts, a tee shirt, raptor gloves, and my ever-present radiation badge, I was greeted with the customary barrage of hissing, growls and spitting I had come to expect. When I opened the door to sneak her litterbox out, she did something I didn’t expect, and that’s where the real fun in this story begins.
Instead of chewing on me harmlessly, she grabbed the glove with her paws and started working her way up with lightning speed, pulling with the front legs, digging in with her back claws, and lunging until she reached the top of the glove. From that point, she locked her front paws into the cuff of the glove and shoved off with her back legs. I frantically tried to shut the cage door in what seemed like slow motion…too slow. Moving at near supersonic speed, Rambo launched herself through the air and made a beeline for the door.
I will never forget the sound from the Geiger counter as she screamed past it. It went from a slow, steady popping to a roar of static for about half a second. Then she was gone, leaving only the echo of the counter alarm and a stunned veterinary student in her wake.
It was at this point that I realized two things:
- I wasn’t bleeding.
- I had just allowed a radioactive animal to escape. And I was going to have to fix it before I got busted.
I’ll finish this one up next time. Thanks for reading, and let us know what you think…
Lol! Can't wait to hear the end!!
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