Client Miscommunication

Once upon a time, a very good large animal client asked if we would be able to euthanize her cat, with chronic kidney disease.  Not really in my job description, but with enough sedative even a large animal vet can manage to euthanize a cat.  To save a farm call charge, my task was to arrange a meeting place midway between two other appointments, and put the cat to sleep.  Simple, right?

I made the call, arranged the meeting location, felt a little guilty for planning to kill a cat in the Walgreens parking lot, but you do what you've got to do.  Given that one weekend I met a man in the middle of the night in a bank parking lot give him prescription medications, this isn't really that big a deal.  As I'm drawing up the drugs, I'm explaining to the client what I'm going to do and be sure she's on board.  But then she asked a strange question.  "So where do I give the shot?"  I thought she misspoke, so I explained that I would be putting the first shot in the muscle, then once the cat was sleeping, I would administer the euthanasia drug.  Then she asked, "Well where is good muscle to use on a cat?"  I told her that I would give it in the rear leg - and wondered why she was looking at me so strangely.  And then she said, "But I don't have the cat WITH me."

After about 15 very long seconds of silence while I stared at her, the best I could come up with was, "What?"  Apparently she thought she was meeting me to pick up the drugs for a DIY at-home euthanasia. It didn't enter her mind that 1) the drug needs to be put into the blood stream, and 2) it's a drug that's is used to kill things and I just can't be handing that stuff out like Halloween candy.  Never did it enter my mind that when arranging a euthanasia appointment, I would need to explicitly tell the owner to bring the animal with them. 

So she went home.  I went off to my next appointment.  I'm still more than a little confused about the whole situation.

I assume the cat is still alive.