Veterinary medicine is certainly an interesting field of study and an even more interesting field to practice. I started out volunteering with a local veterinarian working with wildlife, and I worked with wildlife during my job at the time as well. Our family had dogs for my entire life, and I had learned a lot during that time, but when I started working with a small animal veterinarian after I moved here it was a real eye opener! One of the biggest adjustments was learning how to deal with clients. In wildlife we usually only had to deal with people when you went to get the sick or injured animal, and after that we just dealt with the animals and the vets.

When I first started working in the small animal office I was a kennel technician which mainly involved walking, feeding, and cleaning up after the dogs and cats that were either hospitalized or boarding. Everything we were supposed to do was written out for us in the animal’s record, making most of our tasks pretty easy. After the kennels were finished, it was my job to give baths to the animals that clients wanted bathed or that the groomer was going to cut. That was back in the days before good flea control, so the most challenging part of that was getting the fleas off (and bathing cats was sometimes challenging, too!). It didn’t take long for my boss to realize that I was reasonably intelligent and very willing to work.

Not long after I started, one of the technicians who normally worked in the exam rooms called in sick, so my boss asked if I would work the shift. I was happy to do it, but I hadn’t had any training, so I got a crash course on exam room etiquette (and I do mean crash; about 5 minutes total!). To say I was nervous was an understatement, but after I had worked through a few rooms, I was gaining confidence. Then came one of the craziest rooms I have ever seen! The client was probably in her middle thirties and she came in with a young adult cat. In the history she gave me, she had owned the cat since it was a young kitten. It was an indoor/outdoor cat, and it hadn’t yet been fixed. Her concern that day was that the cat was very swollen in the rear, and she was afraid that her cat was in heat or worse yet, that she might have been brutalized by some Tom cat. She said she only discovered the swelling the day before, and she really hoped that the cat was not pregnant.

After taking the history, my job was to get a weight and temperature on the cat before getting the veterinarian for the exam. The cat was a very sweet and rather large grey tabby, weighing in at over ten pounds. When I lifted the tail to get the temperature, I got the surprise of a lifetime! Her sweet, innocent female cat was a rather well endowed Tom cat!! I took the temperature and then asked again when she had noticed the swelling. She reiterated that she had noticed nothing until yesterday. I really had no idea what to do next, so I decided the best course of action was to let the vet handle the situation.

When the vet arrived, she did a routine physical exam, which included looking back there, and then very tactfully explained to the client that her cat was actually a male. Good news, though; no chance of pregnancy! She then also discussed all the reasons to get her cat neutered, and they then set up the appointment. To this day, I still have no idea how the client had not noticed the swelling before that day. As I said, this cat was pretty well endowed, and I’m sure that the “swelling” wasn’t actually new. Over the years, I have seen plenty of people who have mistaken the sex of their kittens, and even some slightly older cats, but I have never again had someone think that a set of good sized testicles was vaginal swelling!