Sick Pets: To Make You Sad Before Bed Time (Signed Copy)

Sick Pets To Make You Sad Before Bed Time... A Veterinary Visit You Will Not Recover From Tonight

Welcome to the vet. Many sick pets are here. Many will die. Please don't get upset. This is the bedtime book that is not for bedtime in any functional sense unless the function you want bedtime to serve is an extended emotional experience that carries into the next morning. The pets are sick. Some are critical. The cartoon art is cheerful in the way that veterinary clinic posters are cheerful, which is to say they are clearly trying and it is clearly not enough. This book introduces the patients. It does not promise outcomes for all of them. This is honest. Most bedtime books are not this honest.

This adult parody book is dark humor about pet illness, which is a subject most people have personal experience with and for which the coping strategies available include this book. Humor and grief have always coexisted in the way that this book demonstrates: the cartoons are cute, the premise is not, the gap between those two things is where people laugh and then feel something and then laugh again because the feeling is too much to hold without some humor nearby. The pets are sick. The book is honest about it. That's the whole offer.

This Book IS For:

• Anyone who has lost a pet and has traveled far enough from the loss to find this funny and cathartic
• Fans of dark humor that uses cheerful art direction to make difficult subject matter approachable
• People who know that grief and humor coexist and find books that acknowledge this more honest than books that don't
• Gift-givers who want to give something to a pet owner who can handle the full emotional range this delivers

This Book Is NOT For:

• Pet owners whose pet is currently ill and who do not have the emotional bandwidth for this particular bedtime reading
• People who believe pet illness should be treated with consistent gravity and never as a vehicle for comedy
• Readers who need all sick pets to recover and the vet visits to end in healthy discharge and reduced bills
• Children, obviously, for whom this book would function as delivered: something that makes them sad before bed

Appropriate For:

• Gag gifts for veterinary professionals who have seen enough to find this funny and need something for the break room
• White elephant exchanges where the room includes pet owners who have had the vet experience and can laugh about it now
• Gifts for the friend who recently lost a pet and has arrived at the stage where dark humor is useful
• Bedtime, ironically, for adults who want to cry a little before sleep and find that clarifying

Why Buy This

Pet medical care costs thousands of dollars annually in this country, and the emotional cost runs higher. This book costs a fraction of a single vet visit and provides the emotional acknowledgment that vet visits provide the bill for but not the processing space. The pets are sick. Many will die. The book is honest about this in a way that is simultaneously the darkest and most accurate thing available in this format. Dark accuracy has value. This book has it.

Buy it for someone who has been to the vet recently and needs to laugh. Buy it for a veterinarian who has seen too much to find this shocking and just enough to find it funny. Buy it because pets are mortal and the illustrated children's book format has been avoiding this conversation for too long. The vet is open. The patients are in. Don't get upset. Many will be fine. Some will not. The book is honest. Fewer things are.