Chloe's Corner
Cats hate change! We know what we like and want to keep it that way. Buy us a new kind of litter and we let you know what we think by peeing on your favorite chair. Give us a new kind of food and we go on a hunger strike. Move us to a new home and we will hide for a week.
I am like every other cat and am perfectly content with my world. I like to sleep at the front desk, eat my meals at 8 am and 6 pm every day, and try get Ken the Fed Ex man to pet me when he comes in every afternoon. So when I heard that Cloquet Animal Hospital was going to change the way x-rays were processed, I was not happy! I loved following the technicians downstairs while they sat in the dark room waiting for the processor develop, then following back up the stairs to hear the doctor say “that didn’t turn out right. Please retake the x-rays.” Sometimes this would happen five or six times a day. And it had to be at least once a month that the repair man came to try fix the machine because another part had broken. I just loved to climb in his little tool box and try help him fix the latest problem. But a month ago, we said goodbye to our old x-ray processor and a new digital processor was installed. Cats don’t care about technology. We don’t need fancy gadgets to make us happy. Cloquet Animal Hospital doesn’t need computerized x-rays – the old way worked just fine. So I protested the change by coughing up a hairball on the carpet by the stairs.
Listen closely because I am going to say this once and only once – I was wrong. The digital processor is amazing! The x-rays provide so much more detail that the doctors are able to diagnose even the most subtle changes. And if there is something they are unsure about, a consult with a radiologist is just a couple clicks away. The x-rays show so much fine detail, even I am starting to diagnose things. The x-rays process in just a fraction of the time it took before and there is rarely a need to do a retake. This makes for better medicine and happier clients. I thought I would miss all those trips downstairs to the processor, but now I have more free time to rub up against the clients and ask for treats. And since they are happy with the high quality x-rays they just saw, they are in a much better mood and are more willing to give me treats. Maybe change isn’t so bad after all!