I took my young cat to the vet on Tuesday, just for his annual exam and vaccines and such.

Have I mentioned that I’m pretty sure our veterinarian is a witch?

I love our veterinarian. She looks to be about 600 years old, is less than five feet tall, and has the high crackly voice that I associate with witches. All she needs is a gnarled stick for a cane and a house made of candy in the woods.

Clearly she is not the candy-house-in-the-woods sort of witch because I have looked at a lot of real estate in this city and never seen such a thing. Also, I don’t think that sort of a witch would go to veterinary school.

But what sort of a witch becomes a veterinarian? I like to picture her growing up on the outskirts of a village in some country where they use a Slavic alphabet, hands slightly twisted and gnarled even as a young girl. The village cats must have been her familiars, and she fed them and took care of them. She learned how to set a broken kitty cat bone and how to feed orphaned kittens. It’s not too far a leap to picture her coming to the United States at the age of 500 and deciding it was time to go to vet school.

I love our witch vet. The first time she met my older cat she took one look at his grey tail with the little white tip and exclaimed “Well, someone has been painting!” When she noted this week that my younger cat had gained a pound since his last visit I apologized and explained that “he really loves his tiger treats.”

“Well, that’s okay; he deserves it!” she said, petting his tiger stripes admiringly.

He does, and she would know since she’s been loving and caring for cats since before the Reformation.