My friend Jan adopted a stray cat several years ago and very responsibly took her to be spayed. Unfortunately for the cat, the vet cut her open to find that she had already been spayed.

Several months later, Jan came home from the grocery store and, after bringing in one load of groceries, got distracted and forgot to retrieve the rest. When she remembered, she went outside to discover her cat dangling from the closed trunk by its leg. Apparently, the cat had jumped into the trunk hoping to find something yummy, and the defective spring on Jan’s trunk had given way, closing the trunk on the poor kitty’s leg. Jan’s husband, an emergency room physician, insisted that the major artery feeding the leg had been irreparably damaged and that the leg would have to be amputated. But Jan, responding that he was a “people doctor” and not a “cat doctor,” insisted they try to save the leg. Following a $1300 surgical attempt to salvage the limb, the vet called to tell Jan her husband had been correct. The leg was amputated.

The cat went on to live a relatively happy life, I guess, despite two unnecessary surgeries and the hassles of balancing on three legs. When she developed rectal cancer, there was an unsuccessful attempt to remove the tumor before she went to kitty heaven.

Jan called me several days after the cat died. She was annoyed because the vet had sent a sympathy card reading, “On the death of your four-legged friend.”

“They didn’t even know my cat!” she complained. “They’re the ones who removed her leg. Of all people, they should have known my cat had three legs!”

I tried not to laugh, but it was just too funny. And I’ve told that story often, usually commenting that I wonder what the cat did in a previous life to deserve that kind of existence. Whatever you want to call it, that idea that we get what we give, it’s a fact that sometimes karma’s a real bitch. Somehow, what we put out there always comes back.

I should know, because I laughed at Jan and her cat, and here’s what happened: in the past few months, my son’s dog had a leg amputated, and my daughter’s Bengal cat, the one who had already been spayed, was in heat.

I called the veterinarian’s office. “It’s impossible for her to be in heat. We take out BOTH ovaries when we spay,” the receptionist said when I called to make the appointment.

“But she’s trying to escape the house, and there’s blood,” I answered. So they told me to bring her in. And in the examination room, the vet began making strange chirping noises.

“What are you doing?” my daughter asked.

“That’s the noise they make when they’re in heat,” he explained. “I’m trying to get a reaction out of her.” And that was the extent of the examination. He shrugged and said, “We removed both ovaries, so she can’t be in heat. The blood must be the result of a rectal issue.”

So the expensive kitty with malodorous diarrhea is now constipated. Lauren’s daddy, the man responsible for giving me this tainted pussy, refuses to take the cat until he can get a fence built in his backyard. Apparently, he’s hoping to build a fence that will contain an exotic wildcat who may or may not be in heat.  And it’s not the first time he’s unsuccessfully tried to tame an exotic pussy.

But I’m not going to laugh at him. I’m afraid he might come back to me.