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“You guys, I keep telling you, I don’t have a bad tooth! It’s all good, I’m fine!” They gave me a look of pity that almost hurt as much as my tooth was hurting. “I swear!” I said. “It doesn’t hurt. Look!” I chewed down on the comforter. “Do you think I would do this if my tooth hurt? Huh?”

“It’s very soft, this comforter,” said Harriet skeptically. “Try biting down on this.”

She pointed to Gran’s wooden footboard. I flinched, then decided to accept the challenge, and bit down on the board, which was about half an inch of laminated chipboard. Immediately I regretted my initiative, as a sharp pain shot through my jaw, then blossomed into my head like a full-blown headache. Ouch! I let goof the board and had to grit my teeth to keep from uttering a yelp. Of course by gritting my teeth I only made matters worse, and when the faces of my friends contorted in a vicarious pain response, I cried, “Okay, so my tooth hurts a little bit! But so what? It will heal, right?”

“Wrong,” said Harriet, who was quickly becoming the voice of unreason. “Teeth don’t heal by themselves, Max. They should be looked at by a professional.”

“Like Vena,” said Dooley helpfully.

“So you’re going to the vet, buddy,” said Brutus. “Whether you like it or not.”

“In fact we’re all going,” said Harriet, patting my back.

“To give you the emotional support you need,” Dooley added.

I shook off Harriet’s paw. “I’m not going and that’s my final word,” I said. “In fact if I never set foot in Vena’s office ever again it will be too soon!”

Chapter 2

Vena was making a face, which told me things with my tooth weren’t as good as I’d imagined.

“This isn’t good,” she said, as if she’d read my mind. Then made a tsk-tsking sound.

“Oh, poor Maxie,” said Odelia. She still had a few splashes of paint on her face, and wallpaper glue in her hair. Also with us at the doctor’s office were, as promised, Dooley, Harriet and Brutus. For moral support, though judging from their faces and the rapt attention they now paid to the procedure, they were more there as rubberneckers and disaster tourists. You know. The kind of cats that enjoy train wrecks and car crashes.

“Is it bad?” I finally asked around Vena’s gloved fingers as they probed my gums and caused me no small degree of discomfort and pain.

“Oh, how sweet,” said Vena, who could only hear my meows.

Odelia, on the other hand, understands what cats are saying, and she translated my thoughts to the medical woman.“Is it bad, Vena?” she asked.

“You better believe it, baby,” said the large woman. Vena is cut from the same mold that produced the likes of John Cena and Arnold Schwarzenegger and could probably have been a pro wrestler if she hadn’t decided to become a professional pet torturer instead. She was shaking her head in abject dismay. “He must have been in a lot of pain for a long time. Three teeth are beyond salvage. Broken off, protruding roots, infected gum, pus dripping from an abscess. Here. I’ll show you,” she said, and probed my painful gum with obvious delight. “See? And here. See how swollen his gums are?”

I had half a mind to bite down on her fingers, but decided not to. Not out of the goodness of my own heart, mind you, but because I didn’t want to risk hurting my teeth even more. Vena was right. I had been suffering quite a bit of pain lately, but had simply favored the other side of my mouth until the pain went away all by itself. Unfortunately it looked as if Harriet might be right after all: toothaches don’t simply go away,the way other aches and pains often do. They need a professional’s touch to get better.

“So is she going to fix my teeth now?” I asked, speaking a little unclearly as one does when a veterinarian has her fingers jammed practically down one’s throat.

“You’re going to have to leave him with me,” said Vena, finally dragging her eyes away from the devastated area that apparently was my mouth.

“What?” I said, aghast.

“I need to pull all these,” she said, as she raked her finger along my painful teeth, in the process drawing a whimper from yours truly. “And to do that I need to sedate him, of course, and then when he wakes up I’d like to make sure he’s fine before I send him home.”

“But I don’t want to stay here!” I said.

“It’s necessary,” Vena said, as if she could actually understand my heartfelt lament.

“Of course,” said Odelia, immediately caving like a true wimp!

“I’m also going to draw some blood,” said Vena, and proceeded to bring out a huge lawnmower!

Well, not a lawnmower, maybe, but one of those contraptions Chase likes to use in the morning to remove the stubble from his chin and cheeks.

And before I knew what was happening, she’d planted the contraption against my arm and was using it to remove my precious fur!

“Oh, my God!” Brutus cried, holding his paws up to his head in consternation.

“I can’t watch this,” said Harriet, turning away from the horrid procedure.

“Does it hurt, Max?” asked Dooley, the third one in the peanut gallery to make a comment.