Fever pitch

When it comes to being sick, I feel as though I am a cat while the husband is a dog (apart from a hundred other instances when I feel the same way). When I am sick, I retreat. I am best left alone, need no TLC or cuddling or whining or hot soup to be served in bed. Like a cat. But then, cats always like to be left alone, unless they are my current twosome who think they are dogs and give you routine pedicures and hair spas. But more about the aberrations later.

Okay, I am a terribly independent person, who usually lives in a universe that demands an abnormal amount of social niceties, all of which I happily abandon when I am sick and just be the anti-social me and do as I please.

Like a) Not talk to anyone. b) Curl up with a book and not talk to anyone. c) Keep eating and drinking and not talk to anyone. d)Not answer the phone and not make a single phone call and thus, not talk to anyone.

Not that I like being sick or that I fall sick often. I don’t. But when I do, it’s a very private affair.But whatever I do to camouflage, the mother, chirpy and intuitive cutlet No. 1 usually finds out from the inflection of my voice. “Are you sick..?”

Groan! Now she will ask for the gory details.

The husband is not so intuitive. Unless you are swathed in bandages or your face is obviously disfigured or your leg is in a plaster and you are hobbling to the loo, he would assume (naturally) that everything is okay.

On the other hand, he is the type that announces “I am sick” at least 47 times a day the day he as much as has a sore throat or a fever. (Now the M. Pharm in me is appalled at how ignorant people generally are about fever in that it’s the response to a disease and not the disease in itself. Thanks to the poor sods, doctors can have exotic vacations every year)

HE: I am sick.

ME: So eat, sleep, do nothing.

HE: My throat hurts.

ME: So drink lots of fluids, eat, sleep.

HE: Does beer count?

ME: No.

HE: But I have a Man U match and I do want to have a beer to celebrate.

ME: So have a beer.

HE: But I have fever.

ME: So don’t have a beer.

HE: I also have cramps and I feel like I am going to give birth to Danny De Vito.

(Now, speaking lightly about childbirth to someone who has recently given birth is not in supreme taste, but when people are sick, they do strange things.)

ME: So do whatever you want.

HE: I am sick. Please speak nicely to me.

Of all the vows we take when we get married, the one which refers to being there for each other “in sickness or in health” is probably the trickiest (whatever language you took it in). Among all things that tell people apart, what you are when you are sick is a deal breaker. So if you haven’t had your vows yet, it’s time to rewrite them.

P.S. Turns out, getting wrecked on Holi was what did it for the husband, and not the antibiotics and the trying to be a good boy (and failing miserably).

Truth about cats and dogs.. (or men and women)

The mother in law asked, rather innocently, “So what does the cat do all day when you are away?”

I wanted to tell her, “Isn’t that the whole point of being a cat? Doing nothing?” Instead I elaborated on the detailed nothingness of being that a cat is blessed with.

Which is when it struck me how the husband, who never had a pet in his entire life took to our new feline member rather easily. He had found an ally. An ally who celebrated laziness with as much passion as he did. An ally who believed equally in the concept of non-work. Except that the husband is not as lucky as the cat—he only gets weekends off.

Would he have been as happy if we’d got a dog? I doubt. Because that would have meant walking the dog at least once (I would have volunteered the other two times), which in turn would have meant walking with the dog. Which would have meant walking. Which would have meant using up precious couch potato time burning calories he doesn’t have to burn since he is lean anyway.

A dog would also have meant giving it a bath on Sundays, which would have meant having a bath oneself (after you are so messed up, you might as well anyway). Which would have meant disturbing the body’s equilibrium by getting into work mode on off-days. Which would have been totally unnecessary as there is so much joy in doing nothing.

Which is when it also struck me that in the whole relationship dynamic thing, women are the dogs and men are the cats. We go to parlours, get our nails done, hair trimmed, floss, bathe, wear belts and bows, get shampooed, scrubbed, tweezed and epilated with shocking regularity. Not that the men care, but we think they care. May be when men turn into dogs and women into cats in relationships, there is a chemical imbalance, which seems to throw it off-gear. (Just try and imagine yourself with a man who gets a regular pedicure and you’ll know what I mean)

Women also bark (read communicate), eat everything on their plate, answer when summoned, respond to doorbells, alarms, phones and other extraneous noises, run unnecessarily, get excited over frivolities, wag when praised, fetch and preen.

Cats (read men) on the other hand do nothing. And they don’t care if you do nothing either. Yet, they end up having better feet, hands, skin, hair, whatever. Irrespective of what sex they are, cats are quick to co-opt laziness as their birthright and remind you that it’s unnatural to be any other way.

Hence the husband is in a state of bliss that we have a cat and not a dog. The cat reminds him of him.

So now when I return home from work on Sundays, instead of one person who doesn’t answer the doorbell, there are two.