The Tales & Tails of a Yorkshire Vet
By Peter Wright
It started like any other day, with a brew and a natter, and then a look in the daybook to see what jobs I’d be doing. It wasn’t too long ago, and I was at Skeldale, getting on in years but imbued with the confidence to handle most of the things the animal kingdom could throw at me, and the wisdom to palm the job off on to someone else if I didn’t feel like dealing with it as Alf Wight did all those years ago with his crystal ball. Little was I to know that morning that later in the day I would meet my nemesis. I would meet Possum.
The entry in the daybook gave little indication of the travails to come. It simply read “visit Possum – cat, clip nails”. The other job options that day were a couple of bull castrations and various other, what I would call ‘roughhouse’ jobs. I thought back to my early training and, as I had on many occasions, I asked myself, what would Alf Wight do? I affectionately recalled Alf’s use of his imaginary crystal ball in allocating work. The answer was obvious. The youngsters could get on with the physical jobs. I was going to go and see Possum. She lived with a gentleman named Robin Clough, who I knew so there was a chance that I might even get offered a cup of tea. That would be lovely, I thought to myself as I finished off my own morning cuppa.
When I mentioned to the others that I was taking the Possum job, there was deathly quiet from other staff working in the practice.
“Is Possum good to get on with?’”I asked tentatively. There were a few mumbles and one or two smirks. But Possum was only a cat and I’d clipped thousands of cat claws. How difficult could it be? Indeed, if Possum was anywhere near as amenable as her owner, she’d be a... Well, a pussy cat.
Robin is a silver-haired retired engineer. He is very eloquent and very articulate. I know him from our local church in Bagby and he is such a good chap in every sense of the word. Sadly, his wife, Ann, died a few years ago and she adored her cats, of which they’d had several over the years. She was always the one who would ring the practice when there was a problem, for instance when one of the cats had a bit of flu or a bite that needed attention, and it was always a pleasure to visit them. They lived in an elegant Georgian home called Spital Hill, which is a very grand place. When Ann died, Robin sold it and developed the outbuilding into a beautiful house where he lives with Possum, who I had never had the pleasure to meet or treat previously.
The smirks and general uneasy demeanour whenever the name Possum was mentioned gave
