Tim Giago: Surviving the 'Cabbage Pod' with a new member of the family

Monday, June 3, 2019  

It was one of those events that are life changing, but totally unplanned.

I was at the Regional Hospital for an operation for a detached retina. The anesthesiologist was about to put me under when he noticed that my heart beat was so slow that it set off an alarm with him. He immediately stopped, unhooked me for all attachments and had my gurney rolled to an ambulance that took me to the cardiac ward.

The next thing I know I was waking up in the ICU wondering what in the world just happened.

I was later taken to the ward named Coronary Artery Bypass Graft, a ward the nurses affectionately call the “Cabbage Pod.”

My daughters Terri, Denise and Marie immediately came to Rapid City from California, Washington and Brookings to do what they could to help my wife Jackie. I was still in the Cabbage Pod at Regional when Denise and Marie decided I need a comfort pet. They saw an ad in the Rapid City Journal about a farm near Custer that was giving away kittens. It seems that mama cat had been hit by a car. In a driving rainstorm they drove to Custer and retrieved a little black cat with a tuft of white hair on his chest and brought him home. They named him Cabbage Pod, which of course soon became plain old Pod.

In May of this year Pod turned 14 years old. He is not as feisty as he used to be, but he still runs through the house like a wild cat on occasion.

We had a home in the Black Hills at the time and we picked up our mail at one of those community mail box stands which in our case was located about one half mile from the house. I had been home one day and I was pretty helpless. Jackie was in town shopping for groceries and the girls walked down the road to pick up the mail.

So there I was all alone in an easy chair quietly resting when this little black fur ball attacked me. I mean I was still pretty helpless and this little cat is going after me like crazy. Just then the girls came in and grabbed him. Denise said, “Are you alright?” I replied, “Yes, but take that cat, put him in a gunny sack and drop him in the lake.” Of course I didn’t mean it, but at that moment of panic it made sense.

And so Pod has been with us for 14 years. He has turned into a lap cat. He follows Jackie and me around the house meowing until one of us sits down and lets him sit on our laps. He learned how to climb a tree when he was young, but he never learned to climb down. More than once we had to get a ladder and retrieve him from a tree. One day he was standing by the kitchen door waiting to come in and Jackie opened the door and as he entered the kitchen he dropped a mouse on the floor. The mouse was still alive and made a dash for the stack of wood we had by the fireplace and we never saw that mouse again. We know he was bringing that mouse as a gift to us.

The veterinarian has him listed in the files as Cabbage Pod and when Jackie took him in for his rabies shot, the doctor said as he examined him, “This cat has been taken care of very well.” Jackie replied, “Yes he has. He’s spoiled rotten.” And my daughters were right: Pod has certainly turned out to be a comfort animal. He has been a comfort and a joy to us as we all grow older together.

Contact Tim Giago at najournalist1@gmail.com