For three months I interned at the Bobst Animal Center on East 61st Street and York Avenue. I found the internship through my school .I worked there to receive science credit.

Every day started with an earsplitting buzzing sound that always seemed to break the silence of my room every morning at five o'clock a.m, right at the height of my sleep. My mother usually storms in my room thirty minutes later; one yell is all it takes to get me up. It's been this way for three months, and I'm still not used to it. A little later, I greet the brisk morning air with a reluctant yawn, a roll of the eyes, a scratch of the chin and I'm on my way.

The long walk off the 6 train from 61st and Lexington Avenue to York Avenue is a strong test of will. Many mornings I have considered turning around and going back home, saying I'm sick and sleeping the entire day. But I always seemed to convince myself to do otherwise.

The first thing I do when I reach the hospital is change into my scrubs. They're not much to look at due to the constant abuse they get from vomit and urine being splattered on them, being rubbed up against feces, blood, and other types of liquids and body excretions (that I think it's best not to get into here). After I get dressed and swipe in, I start working in my assigned ward.

The first thing you do when you start work in the morning is clean the cages. This entails scrubbing them down with bleach and alcohol, then watering them down. To do this we first take the animal out of its cage and place it in an empty one. Usually this has to be done cautiously.

There is this one cat called Marc Anthony; he's what we call a "caution". That's putting it lightly! He has scarred many hands in his short life, and mine was one of them. The doctors call him,' cage protective' that's why he is nearly impossible to handle. I suggested that they change his name to Hannibal Lector. Truthfully, I think he's schizophrenic. He walks around his cage purring and rubbing his body against the walls, but as soon as you go to touch him, he turns to scratch you.

We have another very disturbed cat called Monkey. She's very "special." They call her monkey because she has a habit of literally climbing the bars in her cage. This freaked me out when I first saw it. When I walk into the ward every morning and the lights come on, I'm greeted with a very lively and melodic meowing, followed by a violent thump. I run around to see what's happened, and there's Monkey climbing up her cage. The thump is her missing one of the bars and falling sideways. She's the only cat I know that doesn't land on her feet. She also has this strange fixation with grabbing a person with her claws and trying, to gnaw on them. What makes this bad is not her biting, but the fact that she had this really bad nasal problem and every so often a lump of snot hits you in the face.

The whole day isn't spent cleaning though; there's a lot more to working in a veterinary hospital. In many ways it's like working in a real hospital. There is a culmination of drama, laughter, and intensity that makes a hospital a hospital. I remember the first time I saw an animal die.

I've seen dead animals before, I've even seen a dead person, but this was different because I was responsible. I remember exactly what happened. "F" ward, where I was working that day, has three parts: an examination area, an area for donor cats and an area for patients. I just finished cleaning the donor cat cages when I heard a loud bark. I went out to see if there was a dog loose, but what I found was a young nurse spoon-feeding a dog some cat food.

It was a young male Rocweiler, no more than five months old; it was still a puppy. I remembered the dog from earlier; he playfully knocked me down several times that morning. He had been in the hospital for several days now and was well known throughout the hospital as being sweet. When I asked the nurse why she was feeding the dog that way, she told me that it was his last meal. She went on to tell me how the owner had been giving the doctors the runaround for several days, unwilling to pay the bill for the dog's stay and the cost of the much-needed operation.

Six days prior to being admitted to the hospital, a car hit the dog. As a result of the accident, a bone punctured the dog's skin. To help the dog, the doctors would have to operate. The procedure, unfortunately, is very expensive. The five days alone spent in the hospital cost over $20,000. The doctors, following normal procedures, inserted what is called a catheter into the dog's vein. A catheter is a needle with an open port. It gives the doctors access to the dog's veins, without having to find a needle all the time. The catheter is used for the administration of liquids.

A male doctor walked unnoticingly into the room. In his hands lay two syringes. One was filled with a clear liquid called Volume and the other I don't know the name of, it held a pink solution. The volume is used to pacify the animal and make him feel a little drowsy, and you can guess what the pink liquid does. I was told to prepare myself to catch the dog.

-Read Part Two