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“No, it doesn’t hurt, but it’s not much fun either!” I said. “Any more stupid questions?”

They all winced as they watched how Vena, with practiced ease, removed a large swath of perfectly fine fur from my arm, then plucked away the remainder and threw the whole lot into the garbage!

“Hey, I need that fur!” I said, aghast. “That’s my fur! You can’t just go and—”

“Just a tiny little prick,” said Vena, and suddenly jabbed a needle into my arm!

“Owowow!” I cried. That wasn’t a tiny prick, you liar!

“Normally I sedate them at this point,” said Vena, “but since Max is always such a good boy…” She casually extracted about a pint of blood, then attached a second tube!

“Is that… blood?” asked Harriet, and promptly passed out.

“Oops,” said Vena. “Yeah, this is not very pleasant, is it, Maxie, darling?”

“No, it’s not!” I cried as I stared at my blood draining away into the tube.

“Harriet!” Brutus squealed. “Harriet! Say something! Doc! Harriet dropped dead! My snuggle bug just dropped dead on me! She’s dead, I’m telling you. Doooooc!”

“Harriet?” said Odelia as she rubbed Harriet’s back. “Are you all right, sweetie?”

In response, Harriet merely muttered something about blood.

Vena adroitly extracted the second tube, removed the needle from my arm, then checked Harriet. She smiled. “She’ll be fine. Maybe you shouldn’t have brought them, Odelia. Cats are sensitive creatures, and it looks a great deal worse than it feels.”

“No, it doesn’t!” I said. “In fact it feels a great deal worse than it looks!”

“Since they don’t know what’s happening, and don’t understand, all they see is me poking their friend with a needle, so they must all be pretty upset right now.”

“I’m not upset,” said Dooley. “I just wonder where all that red stuff is coming from?”

“That’s blood, Dooley,” I said tersely. “My blood!”

“Oh,” said Dooley, frowning. “You mean, Vena is a vampire?”

“Just give her a minute,” said Vena, placing Harriet on a chair. “Now let’s continue, shall we?” She had spilled a drop of blood on her metal operation table, and now pressed some sort of contraption against it. “Let’s check his blood sugar level…” she murmured. She keenly eyed the device and nodded. “Looks good. He doesn’t have diabetes.”

“Diabetes!” I said.

“Now let’s have a listen to his heart…” And she pressed some cold thingamabob into my chest! “Mh…” she said, listening intently at the other end of the weird-looking device, and proceeding to poke me all over my tender corpus! Finally she smiled. “No. No problems there. His heart isfine. Now let’s put him on the scale.”

And before I knew what was happening, she’d carried me over to a corner of her consulting room, and placed me on a big metal plate and held me in place with her gloved hand. I have to confess I wasn’t giving her friendly glances. But she paid me no mind.

“Mh,” she said after a moment. “He’s still a little heavier than I like to see.”

“I’m not heavy!” I said, indignant.

“How much do you feed him?”

“Well…” said Odelia, thinking.

Basically she feeds me however much I like to eat. As she should!

“Does he get a lot of exercise?”

“He does move around a lot,” Odelia confirmed.

“Where am I?” asked Harriet, emerging from her malaise. “Blood!” she cried when she saw me, and immediately became woozy again. Only this time, at least, she didn’t pass out on us.

“I would like him to lose at least three pounds,” said Vena now, the spoilsport. “We don’t want him to get diabetes, or heart disease.”

“And I would like to state, for the record, that I feel perfectly fine,” I said.

“You should limit his portions,” said Vena, “and perhaps switch back over to the diet kibble. That seems to have done the trick last time.”

“He doesn’t like the diet kibble, though,” said Odelia, and I gave her two paws up for coming to my defense!

“Yeah, well, that can’t be helped, I’m afraid,” said Vena with a truly wicked smile. “I’m going to run some more tests right now, and then later tonight I’ll do the procedure.”

“Thanks, Vena,” said Odelia, then turned to me, still sitting on that sneaky scale. “See you later, sweetie,” she said, grabbing my cheeks between her hands and pushing them together, like humans tend to do with babies and toddlers.

“Do I really have to stay here, Odelia?” I asked with a groan.

“Oh, yes, you do,” she said. “You need to have this operation, Max. But I promise, you’ll feel so much better afterward. No more pain. And you’ll be able to chew again.”

“Diet kibble,” I muttered darkly.

“He won’t be able to eat kibble for three weeks, though,” said Vena now. “Only soft food for a while.” And she proceeded to pick me up, and inject something into my back.

“Ouch!” I cried. “When is this torture ever going to stop?!”

“Just some antibiotics,” she explained. “Against the infection.”

What did I tell you? A visit to Vena is like a visit to a torture chamber, or the place where that guy fromSaw lives. Needles, needles, more needles and diet kibble!