Merry Pokemas and a Happy New Poke

I was looking after a little cat with epilepsy over the Christmas period. It was the first time in a long while that the owner had been able to spend a few days with family over Christmas and actually the first time they'd met me, having come across me and my cat feeding skills via a mutual acquaintance.

My job was to visit the cat twice a day, feed him and give him his meds, and let him go outside for a bit.

See, you can tell that something bad is about to happen, can't you? Some kind of cat related disaster. But I bet you'll never guess. You're thinking it ran away, or I trod on it, or I forgot to give it the tablets or it did poos all over the flat.

No. I poked the poor little blighter in the eye, or at least in the vicinity of his eye. How? Well, that's hard to say. But on Christmas night, I was giving him a hearty skritch behind the ear with my index finger, and he suddenly moved his face, and *poke*. There you go.

He didn't cry out, but his eye became a bit watery. I waited to check he seemed okay before heading home, feeling slightly anxious about it all.

The next morning he was looking very sorry for himself, all puffy on one side. Although his eye was open he was winking, and little cat tears were saturating his little cat nose. It wasn't clear whether I had poked him in the eye, or around the eye, but his eye hadn't appreciated it. You have to be very careful with eyes. They can quickly become infected or develop ulcers if the cornea is scratched, and my own cat has a lazy eye and saucy sailor wink from scarring from cat flu as a tiny kitten.

One of the good qualities my parents imparted to me is a strong belief that if you break it, you own up and apologise and things will work themselves out, and this will not only be the right thing to do but the pain of doing this will be far less than the worry of not owning up and taking responsibility. And so it came to pass that on Boxing Day I phoned the owner to alert her that I had poked her cat in the eye, and then paid to take it to the emergency vets to get an eye exam and antibiotic eyedrops.

Whilst at the vets I had to explain that it was not my cat and what happened. In the 'reason for injury' section of the form, they correctly wrote 'carer poked cat in eye'. It's hard to communicate exactly how mortified I was, and unfortunately my embarassment materialised in the form of me involuntarily emitting nervous laughter whilst speaking, so you can imagine how well that came across.

When the vet and I discussed about payment I said 'Well, of course [giggle] I'll be paying because it was my fault. [giggle] I mean, if it had been an accidental injury. No - Wait - Oh God, it was an accidental injury, I mean I obviously didn't poke him in the eye on purpose... er, you know [giggle].'

Fortunately the cost of the vets trip was only 70% of the worst-case scenario figure I had convinced myself it might be, and precisely as much money as I had acquired over Christmas and planned on spending during the sales to buy myself stuff. So if my relatives ask what I got for Christmas I might tell them that I made a charity donation to save the sight of an ill cat. I just might not tell them how the whole thing came to pass...