The Wild Ride to the Vet

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Texas summers weren’t just hot, they were the kind of heat that made you question all your life choices. The sun hung low and heavy, baking everything in sight, including the cracked ground, the sagging porch, and our trailer, which had long given up on keeping anything cool.

The A/C had died a slow death years ago, and since fixing things wasn’t exactly a priority in our house, we learned to live with it. All the windows stayed open, but instead of relief, they invited in a full cast of nature’s worst creatures. Horse flies, mosquitoes, ticks, fleas, roaches, and even the occasional scorpion were just a part of life. Our house belonged to them as much as it did to us.

And the cats. So. Many. Cats.

They were everywhere, slipping through the cracks in the walls, lounging on countertops, multiplying faster than we could count. We had so many that we stopped naming them. There were just too many mouths to feed, so they ate whatever they could find, crumbs, scraps, the occasional roach that scurried too slowly.

The kitchen sink had become a science experiment, dishes from weeks ago stacked high, growing a mold that looked like it had its own zip code. We never washed them unless we needed something. Rinse, reuse, repeat, that was our dishwashing routine.

But the worst of all was the bathroom.

The floor had rotted out a long time ago from years of water overflowing from the toilet and shower. Particle board doesn’t hold up well to moisture, it swells, cracks, and then just gives up altogether.

We were left with a hole in the floor big enough to see the dirt underneath the trailer. To go to the bathroom, you had to balance carefully on the beams, stepping just right so you didn’t fall through. If you slipped, well… you’d be climbing out from under the trailer.

And that’s exactly where our favorite cat came from that day.

I was in the bathroom, carefully balancing, when something exploded up from the hole like a demon straight out of hell.

It was our cat, screeching, howling, flipping itself in midair.

I screamed and fell sideways, barely catching myself on the sink before I followed the cat into its meltdown. It launched itself onto the toilet, then the wall, then the shower curtain, claws outstretched, yowling like it had just been struck by lightning.

My first thought?

Kent must’ve put tape on its paws again.

Now, I’ll admit, we weren’t exactly kind to the cats. Not cruel, but definitely mischievous. Sticking tape on their paws was the kind of entertainment that cost nothing and provided endless laughter. Watching them hop around like their legs had quit working was pure comedy.

But this? This was something else.

I ran out of the bathroom, half-dressed and running for my life, and found my little brother, Kent.

“You put tape on its paws again?” I demanded, pointing toward the war zone.

Kent looked offended. “I swear I didn’t do nothin’!”

Which meant something was really wrong.

We had a system for sick animals, take them to the vet in town, pretend we “found” them, and let the vet do their thing. It had worked before, it would work again.

But first, we had to catch the cat.

It was a two-person operation.

Kent grabbed an old shoebox with a lid, and I threw a towel over the possessed feline, hoping to contain the madness. It didn’t go quietly. It twisted, thrashed, and bit straight through the towel, but somehow, we managed to shove it inside the box and slam the lid shut.

Now, we had a new problem, how to drive with a furious, demon-possessed cat in a shoebox.

I had just gotten my driver’s license and a rusty old car that shook when it hit 30 miles per hour. The last thing I needed was to be attacked by a cat while trying to keep the car on the road.

Kent climbed into the passenger seat, hugging the box to his chest like it was a live grenade.

“If this thing gets out,” he muttered, “I’m bailing.”

“Just hold on!” I shouted, slamming the car into gear and peeling out toward town.

The vet’s office was an oasis…cold, clean, and free of every horror we lived with daily.

We burst through the doors, Kent holding the shoebox like a ticking time bomb, and blurted out, “We found this cat and we think it’s got rabies!”

They didn’t ask questions. They just took the box and disappeared into the back, probably assuming we were the kind of Good Samaritans who rescued helpless animals off the street.

We, on the other hand, collapsed into the waiting room chairs and soaked in the glorious air conditioning.

Kent sighed, stretching his arms behind his head. “You think they’d notice if we just… stayed here?”

“We’d have to sleep in the kennels,” I pointed out.

“Still better than home.”

We waited. And waited. And waited.

They could have kept us there all day, and we wouldn’t have minded.

Finally, the vet came back, his face a mix of disgust and fascination.

“Well,” he said, “I’ve never seen anything like that.”

We leaned in.

Turns out, our cat had a cut on its head. Not big, nothing noticeable. But in our trailer, in the heat, with all the giant horse flies (they bite) and open windows, it had become something else entirely.

A fly had laid eggs in the wound.

The wound healed over.

And when those eggs hatched… the maggots had nowhere to go but deeper, into the spine.

Kent gagged. I nearly threw up on my shoes.

The vet, to his credit, had cleaned it out, but even he had to shake his head. “I’ve seen some bad cases, but nothing like this, it’s a first.”

We nodded, still in shock.

The vet decided to keep the cat for observation, which was fine by us, because neither of us wanted to take home a cat that had literally been eaten from the inside out.

He handed Kent the empty shoebox and thanked us for bringing it in before it suffered too much.

Kent looked down at the box. Looked at me. Then back at the box.

As we walked out into the blazing sun, we both finally took a good look at ourselves, scratched up from head to toe, arms and legs covered in fresh claw marks. Kent rubbed his forearm, looking genuinely concerned.

“If those flies lay eggs in these cuts,” he muttered, “I swear I’ll cut ‘em out myself.”

I snorted, shaking my head. “Guess we better sleep with one eye open.”

We climbed into the car, both too tired to care that the heat had turned the seats into frying pans, and headed home, back to the flies, the balancing act over the bathroom beams, and the ever-growing population of cats.

Just another day in the Piney Woods.

📚 Thanks for reading this week’s Stories from the Piney Woods! If you enjoyed this, share it with someone who grew up country, has had a questionable pet situation, or just loves a story that makes you laugh and cringe at the same time.

See you next Tuesday,
Pam Dwyer (PJ Hamilton)
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