The Finest China in the Cabinet - The Dish.

I was having one of those existential crises Sunday night (in spite of saying I didn't have the Sunday-night-blahs; this was after I went to bed). I was lying there (laying there?) thinking about how I really feel like I've always had it too easy. I've never had any real terrible shit happen to me. No dreadful illnesses; no close friends dying in tragic, horrible accidents. I mean, I've lost people, and had some bad luck, but I've never been struck by tragedy.

So of course I start to convince myself that I'm due. A meteorite is going to crash through the window. A maniac is going to go on a shooting spree in my office, or worse yet something dreadful is going to happen to a loved one.

So I wasn't all that surprised when I woke up Monday morning with this tenderness under my arms. "Of course," I think, "lymphatic cancer. I'll be dead in six months!" So I get up, check myself out in the mirror, do my usual morning ablutions. (The four "S"s my mother and I call them: shit, shave, shower and shampoo.) Nothing seems amiss, and even the swelling and tenderness seems to be going away. I decide I am not going to die in six months, but I still want to find out what's going on. Maybe I only have a year, right?

Well, I always thought this was just a joke, but it turns out I actually have "cat scratch fever!" Oh Yeah! And a little dose of "Wango Tango," too.

Evidently, the little stray kitten the missus and I foster-parented about six weeks ago was a carrier. The incubation period is about six weeks, and it causes a small red nodule at the spot of the scratch (and here I thought I had been bitten by a deadly spider), slight fever, and swelling in the lymph nodes nearest to the scratch. Nothing serious, and it clears up on its own in a few weeks. But just to make it fun, the doctor may want to drain my lymph nodes if the swelling doesn't go down on its own. How pleasant!

I've tried to convince the missus that I am a were-cat, and at the coming of the next full moon I am going to turn into an orange tabby with a predilection for licking himself in front of company. She's not buying it.