How to Hydrate Kate Dorothy Gilbert It’s easy. The vet shows you. At home you use the ironing board. Hold the cat by her withers. Check the drip-set one last time. Are there bubbles in the flask? Is the line clear of air? The needle sterile? Test all attachments, check the calibrations, then, quickly, plunge the needle in loose skin at her shoulder. You’ve got to do it, for her old no-good kidneys, her dirty blood, poisoned by her body. This cat’s feisty, but she won’t complain; her memory’s too sharp, of pain and this brief ease. You’ve got the news on the radio. While the animal becomes a water-bag, you hear what’s current. Old age is wasting your generation fast, your singers and senators crashing and fading. Eastern Europe, like a blood-soaked map, disintegrates; East Africa grinds bones to sand. In Sacramento, in Albany, on the Legislature floor, they’ve got fist-fights. Holes slowly widen in the atmosphere; Navajo miners die, young men, from the uranium we needed for the atom bomb. You stand there listening, saving a cat’s life. You’re finished. You free her. Already her fluids settle. For now, you’ve washed away the viciousness determined to happen.

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