For Gosh Sakes, She's a Cat

I have a friend named Mary Doe. Yes, you’re right, that’s not her real name, but that’s who she’s going to be here. Anyhoo, Mary has several older cats, including a cat named Daisy.

One morning Mary noticed that Daisy wasn’t acting like her usual feisty self. So she wrestled the cat into a pet carrier and hauled her off to the veterinarian. I don’t remember exactly what was wrong with Daisy. She didn’t have anything life threatening, but the veterinarian wrote out a prescription for his patient—Daisy Doe.

Mary dropped off the prescription at Big Box Drugstore. She took Daisy home and went back to pick up the cat’s medication. Figuratively speaking, Mary hit a brick wall at the drive-through window. The pharmacy clerk looked at the patient’s name on the packet and asked, “Are you Daisy?”

“No, Daisy’s a cat.”

“Well, this prescription is in Daisy’s name. So Daisy will have to pick up the medication herself.”

“Daisy can’t pick it up herself,” Mary said. “She’s a cat. I just told you that.” The clerk still didn’t get it and insisted that Daisy had to pick up her own medication. Mary decided that the woman had probably misunderstood company policy. She had been picking up medications for her cats there for years without a problem. Mary asked to speak to the pharmacist; the clerk told her he was out to lunch.

Realizing that she was holding up the drive-through line, Mary parked her car and went into the store. She found another clerk who, sadly, turned out to be a clone of the first one. “Daisy really needs to come in and pick up her own medication,” Clerk Two told her.

“For gosh sakes, she’s a cat,” Mary said for the third time, stifling an urge to spell out the word cat. “And anyway, I don’t think Daisy’s in a good mood right now.” Mary wondered why the clerks couldn’t understand that Daisy was an animal and, therefore, shouldn’t be required to pick up her own medication. Were they both new employees? Didn’t the company train pharmacy employees to recognize prescriptions written by veterinarians? Did the women think Mary was planning to get high on the medication or market it to her friends?

Fortunately for Mary, The pharmacist returned just as she was about to give up and go home without the medication. Apparently, the pharmacist was the only one in the department who recognized that the prescription had been signed by a veterinarian. And no, he told Mary—and the clerks, Daisy did not have to pick up her own medication.

Now, if I had been Mary, I wouldn’t have gone into the store. I would have gone home, wrestled Daisy into a pet carrier, driven back to the store, hauled cat and carrier over to the pharmacy, and announced:

Here’s Daisy, come to pick up her own medication.

Meeeowwwrrr!