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Some years ago on May 30, Mary Fleming noticed a strange amanita
growing near her house in Upper Nyack. She picked the plant, volva
and all, and put it to dry in the sun on top of her station wagon. A
little later before driving into town she took the mushroom off the
car and put it up on an outside window sill, also in the sun. When
she did this, she may have been thinking, consciously or
unconsciously, of putting the mushroom out of the reach of her
cats. She had, at the time, nine of them. At any rate, when she
returned home after having run an errand in Nyack, two Siamese
cats, Poom Poom, a mother, and One Yen, her kitten, were busy
eating the amanita. Three other cats, not Siamese, were standing
nearby interested in what was going on. Only about a third of the
amanita remained uneaten. Six hours later, the Siamese became
ill. They vomited and had diarrhea. Instead of walking, they
staggered around. They suffered peristalsis. Eventually they were
quite unconscious. They couldn’t move at all. When Mary Fleming
took them to the doctor, they were “like two fur boards.” They were
given injections of atropine. They recovered completely. Twelve
days later there was a thunderstorm. One Yen, the kitten, died in
the driveway. Autopsy showed that the cause of death was heart
attack. The mother, Poom Poom, still lives but has never had
another litter. ¶ That’s one story. Another version is quite
different. It wasn’t a cat that died in the driveway, but a dog.
What happened was that five days before the thunderstorm, Mary
Fleming went to Trinidad where her husband was collecting snakes.
She stayed there for a month. Back home in July she found that
three of the cats that had recovered from the mushroom poisoning
were sick. This means — since One Yen was already dead — that at
least two of the ordinary cats not only observed the Siamese eating
the amanita but themselves partook. 2 − 1 + 2 = 3. The three cats
who were sick in July were taken to the doctor who said they had
enteritis. He was able to cure them. The cause of One Yen’s death
is unknown. Perhaps it was the atropine. Since Mary Fleming was in
Trinidad there was no autopsy. One thing is certain: Poom Poom is
sterile. |