Do I have to be blogging for four years to be considered a specialist?

Across from my desk hangs a large photo of Madonna slinging back pints of beer with Guy Ritchie and Quentin Tarantino. Yesterday, two men walked by, and one said, “How cool would it be to sit in a bar and drink Guinness with Guy Ritchie and Quentin Tarantino?” I looked at the photo, and Quentin is wearing this garish seashell choker-necklace like the one I bought in Florida in, like, fourth grade, and he’s wearing it with a “Saturday Night Fever” leisure suit. This, to me, eradicates any coolness factor from the scenario. My guess is that Madonna and Guy need the beer in order to withstand The Boca Necklace.

Josh and I had to rush our cat, Gwendolyn, to the vet yesterday morning. She has a myriad of health issues, not the least of which are cysts around her liver. Every three months, we take her to a highly recommended vet on Staten Island who is remarkable; he’s helped us keep her alive for years and we wish he lived with us. In any case, he has told us that if she jumps and lands wrong, there’s a chance a cyst could rupture, which would be the equivalent of a burst appendix. Even so, with the help of every-other-day IV hookups, prescription food and a regular intake of SAM-E, she still runs around and flirts and gets coy and is thriving — and she only has one operational kidney, which only works at 25 percent and has a giant stone in it. She’s the most easygoing, sweet-natured, resilient animal.

Anyway, yesterday morning she fell off our bed, which is pretty high off the ground. She started acting funny and walking weird, so we went to a vet close to our apartment that has emergency services. The first doctor we saw was lovely, didn’t seem too alarmed, told us the cysts were intact and had not been punctured or compromised in any way, and had us wait to see another doctor.

The second doctor could best be described as Bitchy McCrotchypants.

I understand that many medical professionals lack in the bedside manner department. That’s all well and good if they know what they’re doing. This doctor? Not so much.

She walked into the exam room and immediately launched into, “So, you take her to another doctor on Staten Island?” Now, it would be one thing if she was curious about why we go all the way out there and asked for our vet's contact information in case she needed to talk with him, but there was an immediate attitude. Her tone was accusatory and defensive, and she just had a look on her face that was unpleasant. We said we take Gwendolyn to a specialist for her kidneys. She snapped, “Is this person a true specialist?” We were a little dumbstruck, because we figured she was there to find out about our cat who fell some distance and could have done damage to her felinity, but no. She appeared frustrated with us, and continued.

“Did your doctor do an additional four years [or whatever some such nonsense] to become board-certified as a specialist or not?”

We said we didn’t know what degrees and certifications Dr. Kinnear had completed before launching his successful veterinary career some 40 years ago.

So we started to tell her why we were there, that we were concerned that a vascular cyst had burst. She immediately got a Melanie-Hutsell-as-Tori-Spelling assface and said, “Vascular cyst? There’s no such thing. You mean, a tumor.”

And each time we said the word “cyst,” she’d interrupt us and bark, “TUMOR!” to the point where we resolved to use the word “growth” to shut her up. Keep in mind, when we told the first doctor that Gwendolyn had cysts, she didn't bat an eye.

She went about questioning all of our knowledge about our cat (HER: “Why isn’t she being treated for hypertension?” US: “Because she doesn’t have it; her blood pressure goes up at the vet because she hates being there.” HER: “She has hypertension and isn’t being treated for it!”), and then she burst into a jargon-filled tirade about all the things that could be wrong without actually saying anything of substance. She did say that “ugly things” could be going on in Gwendolyn's body. When I asked her what she meant by “ugly things,” she stood back, stared me down, and blustered, “SHE. COULD. DIE.”

Okayyyyyyyy …

So I said I understood that, but what I meant was that I was interested to hear what could lead up to such a grim result. Like, what’s wrong with her, you freak?

We ended up leaving there with no information other than that we’re terrible parents and the borough of Staten Island is killing our cat. She told us that since Dr. Kinnear apparently knows so much, we should take her to see him.

By the time we got home, Gwendolyn was eating, jumping on the couch, and causing all-around havoc, per usual. Dr. Kinnear said to keep an eye on her and call him in a few days if she shows signs of waning. If a cyst burst, she wouldn’t be acting all Gwenlike and she certainly wouldn't be eating, so she probably just bruised her hip when she fell and is getting better as she's walking it off. He laughed when Josh told him that the vet was a — how you say? — “quack.”

That settled, I went to work, where I participated in this conversation with two coworkers, James and James.

ME: I hate it when people say, “I’ll let you go,” when THEY want to get off the phone.

JAMES 1: I do that.

JAMES 2: I do that too.

JAMES 1: I did that on two phone calls last night.

ME: Never mind.

Also? I’m completely obsessed with “Project Runway.” I’d never seen it before this season, but I can completely get behind a reality show where people actually do something creative and worthwhile. Except for the poufy Bedazzled skirts that look like Phyllis Diller that Batshit Crazy Angela keeps making. Those are not worthwhile.