At the vet, there are creatures of all kinds.

There are certainly people who look exactly like their animals. Like the skinny lady with the weiner dog or the fat old man with the fat cat.

There are also Vet Techs, who care for each furry patient with a soft tenderness that you would think a cloud would have if it had to take care of others....all while wearing what seems to be a different tablecloth each day to work.

I just trekked to this mystical place with both my cat and my dog for a check-up.

The cat was first.

Now, the vet, bless his soul, let's just call him Mr. Vet, shall we? Mr. Vet has a little tiny dot of a mole that hangs off the edge of his nose as if it's about to finally jump for good. It's getting ready for the big jump, I can tell. Any moment that thing is going to fly off his face. You can feel it.

It always seems to distract me (bless my soul, please) from answering him in any semblance of a normal way of speaking and communicating.

"How old is your cat?" He asks. So straight forward. Bless him again. And that little moley friend of his, which just so happens to be directly in my line of vision at this point. I try to look away - I try to think about what looking away would look like without looking obvious. I try to mash words together to form a sentence at the same time. What comes out is this:

"He's three," I say. "I mean -- four. He's four. No...wait. " I look away and count quietly, quickly....1...2... "Oh yes. He's three. I mean four."

The cat is three years old. His birthday was May 29th. If he asked me when his birthday was I would have probably answered him with "Party" or "Candles". Who knows.

He then went to pick up the cat and touched Murray's bottom, which immediately flung straight in the air. "Must have a sweet spot," he says, non-chalantly.

"Really? I never noticed. I mean....I just did that before we came here. I mean...this cat must really like you!"

Moving on from the cat, it was now the dog's turn. My dog is 78(0) pounds of sweet baby puppy and he became very, very tense as three or four vet techs in bright colored tablecloth outfits came forth to keep him from running away. He did fine with his shots, though - he was a real champ.

We all were, really, especially that doctor, and his little mole, too.

WHY am I so easily distracted? Why can't I just see the person on the inside? There's always next time, I guess. I guess I'll just look past the mole, and right at the soul. That is a good motto.

I mean....

Unless the mole really does jump down and join the rest of us as a free citizen of the world.

We'll see.