Mmm, Tulips!

Carl got me some very nice purple tulips for Valentine’s Day. I put them in some water and promptly forgot about them…I saw them there in my room, but didn’t think about them too much, as might be evidenced by my leaving them to softly wilt for several weeks now. Such is my indolence that I haven’t even been able to get it together to throw them away. Low-key housekeeping, that’s the polite way to describe the way I do things.

Siegfried The Cat, however, was quite taken with them. He liked to sniff them and bat at them and growl at them, these very fascinating purple tulips. He knocked over the vase several times last week so he could drink the water before it soaked into the carpet. And yesterday, as I was tripping over the flotsam and jetsam that does seem to accumulate on my floor on the way to the bathroom, I noticed that not only had he knocked over the vase again, but seemed to have beheaded all the flowers. He very neatly ate every single petal off every single tulip, thoughtfully leaving behind the eviscerated stems and leaves. Hmmm. Quite a gourmet, this cat. Brains, not so much. We’ve been calling him Siegfried Gamgee since we got back from Florida and noticed he’d gained eight hundred pounds or thereabouts. I haven’t brought this up with him or anything, because it’s not like I’m a slender sylph, and I’d hate for the cat to throw that in my face, but he does look really round and not so bright, much like Sean Astin as Sam. Deane (my landlord and Ziggy’s for-real owner…Ziggy and I are just a temporary thing, you understand) says that if he could talk, he’d sound just like Sam as well. “Oh, no, Miss Chiara, I ain’t leaving your house nohow!” Yes. The cat is a hobbit. Or something.

Anyway, yesterday morning. “Self,” I asked myself, “are cats supposed to eat tulips?” Ziggy looked fine, but I wondered. Hmmm. Hmmm hmm hmm.

I called the vet when I got to work, and asked what they thought, and apparently caused something of a fight in the back office among the vets, some of whom thought that tulips are very poisonous and that my not-really-mine, hobbitish cat would be in convulsions within half an hour. The other vets thought it would be okay and would I please stop calling them with my stupid concerns? The receptionist related all this, and then gave me the number for Poison Control. “Just in case,” she said.

I felt kind of stupid, calling Poison Control about a cat who isn’t, technically, my cat. But I would feel even more stupid if he really did start having convulsions or whatever, so I called the very nice people there and was transferred to a Poison Control guy with the most melodious, smooth, Bing-Crosby-esque voice I have ever heard or ever hope to hear. How did he get to be a Poison Control expert telephone guy, and not, say a phone sex operator, I will never know. Our conversation was too brief and to the point to really get into particulars. But still. His gorgeous, velvety, pipe-smoky voice, all caressing me through the phone lines.

Poison Control Guy: Poison Control, what seems to be the problem?

Chiara: Ooooh! My my! I, uh, well…my cat ate a tulip, but to hell with him. Are you free later?

Co-workers: Ha HA!

Poison Control Guy said that tulips are either completely toxic, occasionally poisonous, or absolutely harmless to cats. How helpful. He said it as though he really cared, though, and not as though he thought I was a complete dork and wished he was talking to someone with a real problem, deserving of his poison control love. He told me to watch out for any vomiting or diarrhea (oh, and won’t that be thrilling viewing) and excessive drooling. We didn’t hammer out the fine points of what constitutes “excessive,” thank heavens. (“Okay, is a quart of drool an hour too excessive? How about a pint? Pint and a half? Oh, okay, pint and a half is too much, but a pint is fine. Okay, thanks!”)

He seems fine so far. I once saw him eat several inches of grosgrain ribbon, and he seemed fine then too, so I guess everything’s fine. Fine cat. Fine cat who loves flowers so much he feels the need to become one with them by digesting them. Daffodils are starting to come up in the yard, so that’s no good, and I shudder to think what he’ll do with the hydrangeas. That’s okay. It’s almost spring, and that’s pretty exciting news here in the passively aggressive drizzly Pacific Northwest. If the cat gets a little out of control, I guess I can’t blame him, right?