Yesterday, in a conversation I was having with a Louvah – I shall call her Miss Susie – I learned of yet another modern-day syndrome and of the most extraordinary means to prevent its onset.
“I get to keep my neighbor’s cat, Penelope, this weekend while she’s away in Amsterdam,” says Miss Susie all a-smile.
“But wait a minute, cats are not allowed in the dorm…” Though I’m not the kind of director who would report Penelope to the dorm’s manager, Mr. Murphy, I felt it my duty to restate the house rules.
“Oh well, this one can. It’s there for medical reasons. My neighbor came with a whole report from her doctor in Cleveland. She’s got to have the cat.”
“How’s that?”
“Oh! You see my neighbor has these cataclysmic panic attacks and the cat has been trained to smell the chemical changes in her brain that occur just before an attack happens…”
“Hmmm… and then what?”
“Well, the cat climbs on her belly and then taps three times on her shoulder with its paw. That’s how it lets her know the attack is imminent.”
“So she has to be lying down?”
“No, actually not. A lot of the time she wears the cat on her shoulder which makes it really easy for Penelope to signal.”
“I see.”
“Usually she just needs to change her environment to stave off the attack. Sometimes she comes over to my room,” Miss Susie adds.
“And that does the trick? That’s enough to keep the cataclysm away?”
“Yeah, apparently.”
Friends, I have decided to train Beasty Boy (ci-dessous) to sniff out the chemical changes that occur in my brain right before I am left contorted and incontinent by a cataclysmic laugh attack. In Louvah Land anything is possible.
