"The Highest I've Ever Seen"

I recently had some blood work done to figure out what I'm allergically reacting to on my skin.  My very experienced physician - who told me he was Jonas Salk's last graduate student (and Salk died in 1995) - spoke with me today about some preliminary lab results he'd gotten back on the blood work, and made this statement:  "For cat, you were very high. In fact, the highest I've ever seen for any patient."  The man's been in practice for decades and has seen 1000s of patients.  Wow.  That stuck with me.

So, while I loved my cat while she was alive, and I miss her tremendously (her presence, her warmth, her meowing, her companionship, her sense that she owned the house, the couch, the people in it, her ability to kill spiders and beetles and silver fish, the way she didn't want her back petted but preferred it be 'spanked' when she arched up into your hand, her patrolling of the house for no reason, her watching NFL football with me, her indignation when I'd yell at a losing Bears or Cubs or Blackhawk's game, her watching birds at the window and making the "at-at-at-at-atttt" sounds) ... replacing her, and the "hole" that not having her in my life has left, with any feline, is contra-indicated to my health.  For my friends and acquaintances who keep asking me "when will you get another pet?" my answer will continue to be: "DDF will get several cats after I die".

Dogs, ragweed (I shall not go to my preferred yoga spot at the lagoon again, which is surrounded by ragweed), and alternaria fungus were also strong reactors in the blood work.  So I can't get a canine, a sentient pollen laden weed, or a mobile fungus based pet either  = P   ...probably why some beers (yeast is a fungus) make me so darn itchy as well.

"The highest I've ever seen".  Great... not exactly what I wanted to be remembered for, or "best in" ... but now I know that volunteering at the animal shelter in the future is a Very Very bad idea for me and my histamines.