Little Lungful Became Indignant

I’ve got a cat problem.  Same one I’ve always had.  I get allergic.  Makes breathing hard, my eyes itch.  I remember it as being an inconvenience in my youth when we had one home or as an adult when I’d stay with a friend who had a feline.  But over the last three months of kitten-to-cat ownership, things have gone from inconvenient to major drag.  I feel like a half-a-me waving out from an iron lung existence.

A week or two back in the middle of a breath denial session, I stood outside for a while sucking up the “fresh” Beijing winter air and found no relief.  So I took the car and headed over to the local clinic to procure an asthma inhaler.   I was standing in line sucking air like I had a wet washcloth over my face.  When I finally reached the over-the-counter staff they refused to sell me the inhaler without a prescription.  Huh?  She had it in her hand.  I wanted it now, and I was more tempted than is healthy in civil society to grab it out of her hand and suck in relief.  I resisted.  “Then get me an appointment.”  She looked and suggested I’d need to wait two hours.  Now little-lungful became indignant that it would need to happen now, and soon I was sitting down with Dr. Wang who agreed that an inhaler would be just the thing. 

The inhalers are only eight dollars, but the Doc’s clearance set me back one hundred an twenty U.S. pesos.  This mattered not as I was now sucking in two hits and feeling proper once again.   And I decided to march back to the doctor’s office with both my lungs and ask about my fallen arch pain as long as I’d paid the needful for a full consultation. 

Last night I chatted with the girls.  Listen, breathing is kinda important and . . . we need to do something here.  Wife is strongly in favor of deportation.  The cat entered our home legally and I am conscious of teaching these kids the right lesson about caring for another creature . . . to a point.  I invested five minutes on Wiki and learned what I could about cat allergies.  Apparently we (they) need to comb the cat daily and wash its hair all the time.  This should help.  We’ll get some newer purifiers. This could be a plus.  And apparently she is supposed to eat lots of omega-three fatty acids.  A deeper look revealed that the kitty would therefore need to eat lots of flax, which sounds cheap but improbable or lots of salmon which sounds like an a brochure for an expensive kitty fantasy.   We are now on a one-month experimentation to see if we can eliminate the vexing allergens from our home and my lungs. 

Saturday, 02/11/17