This post is fictitious. Any resemblance to pets, people, or practices is purely coincidental. If stories of fictional bad behavior, pet illness, violence, and magic make you uncomfortable, please consider skipping this story. Alternatively, if you like scary vet stories, you might enjoy previous years’ posts: I Should Not Have Written This and The Disturbing Case of Dr. Levana Crow.
Dr. Ashleigh Felstad lost her veterinary license in 2024. It was bullshit, and no one could prove she knew her boyfriend was stealing drugs from the house-call bag. Sure, there might have been clues a veterinarian could pick up on, but her man was smart enough to add water back into whatever bottles he took from, like a high school kid slowly diluting his parents’ liquor cabinet. He was also smart enough to share what he took with Ashleigh.
The boyfriend disappeared when the DEA showed up, and that’s when Ashleigh’s problems arrived. She was able to get out of serving jail time, but that was the end of her veterinary license and career. Since then, she has made ends meet managing a soulless dog boarding facility near the airport. That’s where she met Olivia Malice. Olivia had a forgettable black mutt named Jake, and she seemed to always drop off and pick up when Ashleigh was working. Over a few months, Ashleigh learned that Olivia’s family was wealthy, and Olivia’s mother, Helen, was deeply bonded to her cat, Claire.
Helen Malice’s greatest problem was that she couldn’t find a good vet who would come to her, and her beloved pet was in poor health. That’s why Ashleigh wasn’t totally confused when she found Olivia waiting for her in the staff parking lot one evening to offer her a job. Olivia’s mother was apparently a keen old lady who liked to poke into people’s histories online; she knew Ashleigh had graduated from Virginia Tech’s College of Veterinary Medicine in 2016 and also why she was managing the Yapping Yard Dog Hotel. Helen didn’t care about what she did or didn’t do in the past. She just wanted a vet that would come to her whenever she wanted, and she was willing to pay good money for it.
The first few visits to the Malice house were unremarkable, if a bit sad. The ride out took almost an hour, and Ashleigh noticed she passed right by a competing dog boarding facility. The ornate Victorian house where Helen Malice lived was entangled on one side with the vines and sourwood trees of an encroaching wood. The other side of the house jutted out into a field of weeds and hard-packed dirt. It was as if an off-white monster wearing a slate gray hat was trying to escape the sunlight into the forest, but had not yet torn its way through the vines.
Inside, the aesthetic did not brighten. Closed curtains and furniture draped in dust sheets filled the entire downstairs, save the kitchen and what was once the study. The study had clearly been converted to Helen Malice’s private bedroom because, Ashleigh assumed, Helen was too feeble to climb the stairs. Oxygen tanks and tubing, a collapsed wheelchair, and a faded portrait of a man holding a rooster surrounded an oversized bed that felt stuffed into the dark space.
Helen’s cat was a gray domestic shorthair with one eye named Claire. Claire was skeletally thin, and Ashleigh couldn’t tell if that was because of the grape-sized thyroid nodule in her throat or the fire-engine-red stomatitis throughout her mouth. After Ashleigh’s first trip out, she knew the cat was dying and believed this was a hospice case even if neither Olivia nor Helen acted that way. They both talked confidently about how Ashleigh would save the cat, and Ashleigh’s hints that this could not happen given her lack of equipment and access to prescription medications were ignored.
As the end of October approached and the leaves began to darken and fall, Ashleigh was summoned to the Malice house for a “last visit.” Ashleigh, having lost access to any euthanasia drugs, had no idea what this meant. She half assumed she would be asked to shoot the cat, and honestly, for the money she was being paid, she would be okay with that. She had long given up the habit of worrying too much about her patients when her own well-being was in jeopardy.
That evening, Olivia drove Ashleigh out to the house and escorted her to the makeshift bedroom where Helen and Claire spent their days. Claire lay laterally recumbent on the bed, her entire body working to breathe, her pale tongue lolled out to the side like an off-white flag of surrender.
Helen, who had been gazing down at the dying cat slowly raised her eyes. “It is time,” she said. “Time for what, exactly?” Ashleigh replied. “I don’t have what I need to do anything.” At this, the sides of Helen’s wrinkled mouth turned slowly upward and she said, “You’ve brought everything required.”
That’s when Olivia, standing behind, pressed one of Helen’s oxygen masks over Ashleigh’s mouth and nose. Ashleigh gagged on the pungent smell she knew from practice to be isoflurane. She clawed and wrenched at Olivia’s arms, but the young woman was impossibly strong. Olivia wrapped her legs around Ashleigh’s waist and clung to her like a backpack. Ashleigh had the fleeting thought that this would look ridiculous from the outside (like an awkward child giving another a piggyback ride) but then she was on her knees. Her clawing and scratching at Olivia’s arms weakened and then stopped.
The last thing Ashleigh heard was the voice of Helen Malice saying, “Good, good. Let’s get her to the basement, we don’t have much time.”
Two weeks later, Helen Malice sat outside watching her cat sunbathe and play in the yard. It was so good to see her back to her old self. The cat had already gained almost a pound of body weight, and the pink color had returned to her gums. The lump in her throat was gone, and she ate with vigor. Of course, she’d always be missing an eye, but that was part of her charm.
Helen reflected on how many times she had been able to bring this cat back from the brink of death. Sure, a few people had come to her house and never returned, but they werent the sort of people to be missed. Take this last one for instance: how many animals suffered as she administered watered down medicines? Too many to feel bad for her, that’s for sure.
No one had come looking for the former Dr. Felsted since her disappearance, and that made sense. Why would the woman have told anyone she was headed outside of town to practice without a license? Secrecy had been entirely in Ashleigh’s best interest. “Things really do work out beautifully,” Helen thought.
Slowly, the old woman rose to her feet and moved to the screen door that would take her inside. “All right, Ashleigh,” she called. “Let’s go inside and have a treat!”
Across the yard, Ashleigh’s feline ears perked up and her one eye shined. In a flash, she took off towards the house with the grace and enthusiasm of a kitten.
