It's been a bittersweet trip down memory lane these past few days since Woojnick has left us. We had a funny episode some years ago when she developed some allergies that caused her to scratch at her neck ceaselessly. Nearly weekly cortisone shots did nothing, save thin my wallet. One day I ran into this nice but wacky lady in the vitamin aisle at the supermarket. (Wacky because she and her cat were on the same supplements). She recommended a holistic vet on the westside of town. What the heck, I thought. My poor Wooj had virtually dug a hole in her neck.
The doctor seemed nice, rational and normal. He examined the cat and he took the stool sample I was required to deliver(the cat's not mine). He told me that I should get her off the "fancy feast" and go with some organic cat food. Easy. Doable. Done. Not so fast. Then came part two of the exam. He said he had a special way to test for specific allergies. I thought, "Oh no, poor Wooj is going to get stuck with needles." I cringed in painful anticipation. Well, turns out that it wasn't a needle stick that had me cringeing. He brought in his assistant to, well, "assist." She was, he explained, the surrogate. First she grabbed the cat by the scruff with her left hand and then extended her right arm out perpendicular to her body. The good Doctor then brought out a case containing several neat and impressive looking rows of small glass vials, each filled with water. It's not ordinary water, he explained with all seriousness. Each vial had been infused with the frequencies of common allergens, beef, chicken, rice, cheap cat food, etc. And so the "test" began. One by one, he passed the vials under the nose of an unaturally docile and compliant Woojnick. With each pass, the doctor pressed down on the extended arm of the assistant. Sometimes her arm would remain stiff, resistant to the pressure and other times it was fall to her side, only to spring back up. Boinggggg! You see, the assistant was chanelling the energy of the cat's reaction to each allergen through her arm. Stiff arm good. Loose arm bad!
This went on for several minutes. I watched in circus side-show amazement and awe, wondering if I'd somehow "made a left turn at Albuquerque"* and ended up in at a Ringling Bros. show. And why I wondered, was Barnum's quote that "there's a sucker born every minute" spinning in my head? The answer was not long in coming.
The last thing the good, kind Doctor did was (insert pause for dramatic effect here) RESET my cat's brain to deter future allergies. How did he do this most amazing feat you ask? With his special brain resetting instrument of course! He simply reached into his pocket protector and grabbed a (insert yet another pause for dramatic effect here)very special ballpoint pen--the kind with the clickable button at the top. He put the clicky part at the base of Woojnick's head and pressed it several times. Click, click, click, click! There you go! All done. Brain reset. No more allergies.
I didn't know what to say or do. I'd just witnessed and paid for the most ridiculous bit of quackery imagineable. Should I tell him? Instead, I smiled that nice polite kind of smile you smile when you are slowly backing away from a crazy person. I took my compliant cat and figuratively backed out of the room into my car and sped away from there like I was being chased by hound dogs of hell! What the hell!?!? just happenend I thought. Did I just pay $200 for a side-show? I had and now I was mad. The next day I did my usual boomerang. I called the vet and asked for my money back. I told him that it was cool that he'd checked on my cat and tested the stool but the arm-flapping-nose-vial-water-energy-pen-clicking-brain reset thing was beyond my realm of acceptable possibilities--even in my desperation to cure my beloved Woojnick.
I was surprised when he gave me most of the money back, but he did it with that kind of "you have not evolved enough yet to understand this scientific approach" attitude. Perhaps not, and indeed the food recommendation worked wonders for the cat and her neck stopped giving her grief. But I will tell you one thing: that brain reset did not work. Woojnick might have been docile in that office because she was terrified of Dr. Vet man, but once she was home, I knew her little brain was just as it had been before that adventure--nothing like biting the hand that feeds you new and more expensive organic cat food. Maybe the vet hadn't used the right kind pen for the job!
*can you guess the ABQ reference?
