More "Trouble" Than She's Worth

Ok, so Trouble scared me to death this morning. I am writing this seven hours after the incident, and yet I still haven't gotten my nerves to completely calm. The good news is Trouble is beginning to act more like a kitten. Last night she was attacking Step-daughter's hair and climbing across everything. She isn't the least bit shy about checking out her surroundings. It's so cute. This morning I fed her some canned cat food. I knew that she was going to have trouble biting it and chewing it so I mashed it up. Apparently, I didn't do a good enough job. She figured out that this was her plate of food and didn't waste much time getting to work on it. Later I was on the phone with my mom and I began hearing a weird noise. I looked behind me and saw Trouble standing in front of the fire place and it looked as if she were trying to cough up a hairball. Instinctively though, I knew she was choking on the food. It didn't take but a minute for panic to set in. My mom knew that I was freaking. She could hear it in my voice. I hung up with her so that I could call Roommate. She was at work and didn't know what to tell me to do. She kept saying "stick your finger in there and get it out." Yeah, right. Since my pinky-finger is twice as big as her mouth, that'll work. "Try a straw." And even though that maybe the most ridiculous thing to do, I tried it anyways. I ran upstairs and brushed my teeth and put on my bra and my shoes. I called the Vet's office and screamed at the lady on the phone, "I think my kitten is about to choke to death!" It was the most horrific thing I have ever seen. She had the look of panic in her eyes, she was trying to "meow" and couldn't, and she was trying to cough that stuff up all at once. Snot was coming out of her nose and some other sort of "juice" was coming out of her mouth, but not the food. Also, she was making the most awful gurgling noises. The lady on the phone told me to improvise with the Heimlich maneuver. I picked her up and turned her upside down and began squeezing her stomach and beating her on the back. That wasn't working, so I grabbed my keys and the kitten and headed to the Vet. At this point, I had started to cry a little because the thought of watching this poor little choke to death right in front of me was more than I could bear. Besides the two tears the other day over the bunny, I've never cried over an animal a day in my life. This is twice in a week; I must be in for an emotional bout of PMS this week. Great. Anyhow, I was a few miles up the road when she finally coughed it up. I pulled over at Ex's friend's house (the one that I see at The Depot all the time) to call Roommate. I told her that the huge chunk of food was out and that Trouble seemed OK. We decided that I should go ahead and take her on to the Vet just to make sure she was alright. Of course, now she is fine. Vet fell in love with her. He kept calling her Velcro because of how she latches on to everything. Her breathing was good, heart rate was good, and her temperature was normal. She weighs 14 ounces. How cute is that??? We were going to just go ahead and take care of her shots while we were there, but she didn't weigh enough, so she lucked out. She did have ear-mites and we got those cleaned out. No doubt living in the chimney for five weeks had something to do with that. Vet let me watch that examination. He put a scope in her ears and it magnified on a screen. It kinda made me throw up a little in my mouth. But remember that even though it was now 10am or so, when all of that first started, I hadn't even finished one cup of coffee yet. In fact, I was at the Vet's office in my pajamas. Grant it, they're cute pajamas and some people have already said that they thought it was a real outfit. Of everything that I went through this morning, Roommate and Sister seemed the most distressed about me wearing my pajamas in public. Sister called me a Drama Queen at lunch. I protested that the drama always finds me. I'm not a Drama Queen as much as a Drama Magnet.