“How are things this morning?” Lewrie asked.
“Tolerable, sir,” Mainwaring told him, “I’ve one bad tooth that needs pulling, some saltwater boils to lance, and more men with sunburn. Collins, yonder, I’ve put on light duties for three days, after he pulled some muscles at pulley-hauley.”
“Fetchin’ up fresh water casks, was it, Collins?” Lewrie asked.
“Aye, sir, it was,” the young fellow shyly admitted, grinning.
“Enjoy it while you can, Collins,” Lewrie said, then turned to the Ship’s Surgeon. “When you’re done here, Mister Mainwaring, I’d admire did you attend me in my cabins.”
“Shouldn’t be more than an hour, sir, then I am at your complete disposal,” Mainwaring agreed, turning back to the bare buttocks of one sailor bent over a rough wood table, waiting for the jab of a lancet.
“Wonder if t’ Cap’um’s askin’ f’r t’ Mercury Cure,” one sailor whispered in jest once Lewrie was gone. “Mad as ’e is over quim, it’s a wonder ’e ain’t been Poxed yet. Has the lucky cess, ’e does.”
“Now, we’ll have none of that, Harper,” Mr. Mainwaring chid him. “There’s your boils to be seen to, next, hmm?”
“It’d be Mister Westcott, more in need than Cap’um Lewrie,” one of the others snickered.
“Now, now,” Mainwaring cautioned again, trying to appear stern; though his mouth did curl up in the corners in secret amusement.
CHAPTER TWENTY
“Ship’s Surgeon, Mister Mainwaring, SAH!” the Marine sentry at Lewrie’s doors cried, stamping his boots and musket butt on the deck.
“Enter,” Lewrie called back. “All went well, sir?” he asked as Mainwaring stepped inside and approached the desk in the day-cabin.
“Quite well, sir,” the Surgeon replied. “What may I do for you, Captain Lewrie? Some malady that ails you?”
“It is a rather odd request, but I wonder if you might be able to use your general knowledge of anatomy to aid me.”
“Indeed, sir?” Mainwaring said, a bit perplexed.
“A glass of wine, sir?” Lewrie said, pointing to a chair before his desk in invitation.
“Ehm … I’ve been told by the others in our mess that your cool tea is quite refreshing, Captain,” Mainwaring said with a hopeful grin. “I would prefer to sample that, have you any brewed.”
“Always,” Lewrie said with his own grin. “Pettus, a glass of tea for the both of us.” Once the Surgeon was seated, Lewrie went on. “It is not my health that is in question, Mister Mainwaring. It’s my cat.”
Mainwaring pulled a dubious face, mugging in surprise. He had been a Navy Surgeon long enough to know that most ship’s captains were possessed of some eccentricities, and some of them daft as bats.
“Bless me, Captain … your cat, did you say?” Mainwaring said. “I fear that I know next to nothing of dogs or cats. I doubt if anyone does, really. What symptoms does it present?”
Lewrie laid out the moroseness, the sudden lack of appetite and the sudden weight loss, the incontinence, and thirst. Mainwaring sat and hmmed, nodding sagely here and there.
“And how old is it, sir?” Mainwaring at last enquired.
“Over eleven,” Lewrie told him. “I got him as a kitten in the Fall of ’94, just as we were evacuating Toulon during the First Coalition. That’s how he got his name. That, and him, were calamities.”
“Well, off-hand, I’d say that it is suffering renal failure,” Mainwaring supposed, “a malady which comes to man and beast in their dotage. The kidneys stop working, for one reason or another, and the sufferer wastes away, becoming enfeebled. There’s little that I may do for it, sir … little that even a skilled, university-trained physician may do for a man in such a situation.”
“I see,” Lewrie said, crestfallen. “He’s dyin’, d’ye mean. I’d hoped…”
Lewrie got to his feet and went to the starboard quarter gallery and brought Toulon back from his solitary roost. He sat him down on the desk between them, and stroked him to calmness as Toulon curled up into a pot roast; paws tucked under his chest and his tail round his hind legs. Toulon had not seen Mainwaring that much but for rare supper invitations with other officers, but he made no move to curry attention, nor did he shrink away as a “scaredy-cat” might. He just sat and blinked, eyes half-slit.
Mainwaring took a deep, pleasing sip of his cool tea, smiled in delight, then leaned forward to touch Toulon, giving him a closer examination. At last, he leaned back into his chair.
“Renal failure, of a certainty, Captain,” Mr. Mainwaring said. “The dullness of the eyes, the lack of body fat, and perhaps of some of his musculature? When one is starved, for whatever reason, fat is the first to go, before the body begins to use up the last source of nourishment, which are the muscles. Note that when I lifted a pinch of his skin, that it did not fall back into place at once, but stayed erect before slowing receding? No matter how much water it drinks, it is of no avail, for the kidneys no longer function.”
“If there was some way to force water into him…?” Lewrie asked with a fretful frown, stroking Toulon with one hand.
“Perhaps with a clyster up its rectum, sir,” Mr. Mainwaring speculated with his large head laid over to one side, “directly into the small intestines, where the water would be absorbed more quickly, but … that would only delay the matter, sorry to say.”
“Perhaps if he’s only running a temperature,” Lewrie said, with an eye on Mainwaring’s leather kit, which he’d brought with him.
“I am certain that it is, sir,” Mainwaring countered, “but, do cats or dogs have the same temperature as people? I could listen to his heart rate, but what is the normal pulse of a cat? How often to the minute is its rate of respiration? I am sure that there are game-keepers who know something of dogs, horse copers and grooms who know how to fleam a sick horse, what feed to provide, or aid the birth of a colt … or calf, or lamb, or whatever, but … it’s all beyond my experience, sir.”
“Is renal failure, and the wasting away, painful, d’ye think?” Lewrie asked, despairing. “He’s been a fine old cat, and I’d not let him suffer.”
“It could be,” Mr. Mainwaring said with an uncertain shrug. “Or, it could be that it will fall into a deep torpor and just pass away. I do recall barn cats in my childhood that limped off or just went off on their own, and the next we saw them, they’d died of old age or some disease. Perhaps you should just let him expire, on his own.”
“Or, find some way to help him along, painlessly, and without terrorising him,” Lewrie wished aloud. “I can’t put a pistol to his head. The crack of the priming’d frighten him.”
“Well, there’s smothering, or a quick wring of its neck, as one does fowl, or, tied up in a bread bag and dropped over—”
“All of which are violent, Mister Mainwaring,” Lewrie snapped. “Sudden, violent, and frightening. From the time he took hold of my coat sleeve and clambered up to my shoulder, Toulon’s known nothing but fun, play, affection, and trust, and to put him down as you suggest would be … he would die in fear, feeling betrayed. No! There must be another way.”
“Well, sir…,” Mainwaring said with a shrug.
“Sorry, Mister Mainwaring, but … I know I must seem overly sentimental,” Lewrie went on in a softer voice. “Toulon’s just a poor cat, after all, but he and Chalky yonder are great comforts, and companions. They’re all the … friends I may allow myself from out of the whole ship’s company. Losing one, or both, is a wrench. I must think that the crew would feel the same if Bisquit died.”
“I shall look into the matter, sir, and get back to you should I find a painless solution,” the Surgeon promised. “Thank you for the cool tea, Captain. It really is remarkably refreshing.”