Taking your beloved domestic animal to the vet can be stressful, especially if your vet insists on attaching your surname to your dog’s first name, or asks if you’ve considered having your cat put on a special diet of graham cracker bits baked by a California couple named Ned and Nadine. Maybe you begrudge the vet for making you feel less than conscientious about your pet’s health for not flossing your pet’s teeth. Fine. At least your vet cares enough not to haul off and murder your pet if you bring it in for a routine procedure.
This is what happened to one very unlucky Kansas woman named Colleen Conlon, who scheduled her beloved cat Lady and the not-quite-as-beloved-but-still-cool Little Bit for a flea bath with Dr. Muhammad Malik. Conlon’s son dropped Lady off at Malik’s office first and, after filling out some papers that seemed to ask for the standard pet information, went back for Little Bit, which was lucky for Little Bit because, unbeknownst to Conlon or her son, “flea bath” (which most vets describe as an archaic practice anyway) was apparently code for “euthanization.” When Conlon’s son offered to take Lady home if she’d finished with her bath, the vet looked at him in surprise and said, “You want the bodies?”