It's been 3 days since Eddy got upset at dinner time over his patient Mindy, an elderly cat he'd been looking after since he started working at the current veterinarian clinic. That evening Brett had done some research and found a recent news article about a university research team who studied AIM proteins, a substance found naturally in the body that could be the key to preventing and curing kidney failure in cats.

That evening Brett somehow sensed something was not right the second Eddy came through the front door upon his return from work. Brett was in the middle of preparing dinner and he quickly wiped his hands and stepped out of the kitchen.

"Eddy..?"

Eddy had just finished removing his shoes. Without saying a word, he stood still in tears. Brett stepped in close and held him.  Eddy's whisper was barely audible between sobs;

"I had to euthanise Mindy today."

Brett's eyes widened in shock. He then closed his eyes as he hugged his partner, rubbing his back in an attempt to soothe him.

"Oh Eddy, I'm sorry..."

Brett wondered how his partner coped with all this upset that came with the job as a vet. Eddy had once told Brett that he managed to hold it all in while he is at work. Brett therefore believed it's important to let his partner vent and grieve as much as he needed to once he got home.

Dinner plans were canned, with Eddy saying he couldn't bring himself to eat anything. He sat on the sofa with Pag on his lap as he stared at the TV even though he really wasn't taking in any of its content.

"Eddy.."

"..Yes..?"

"Will you come into my office, please?"

"Brett.. I'm sorry, I just want to veg out tonight.."

"Eddy, I think you should see this. Please?"

Eddy reluctantly placed Pag on the floor and made his way to Brett's study.

Brett stood next to his swivel chair and lead Eddy to sit down. He then placed his hands on Eddy's shoulders and spun him around towards his desktop computer.

"So.. what am I looking at?"

"The email reply from the university I wrote to 3 days ago."

"Oh"

Brett had opened the email with a web browser so that he could click the "translate" button

"Okay.. this is the first time I'm reading this, too. Let's see..."

"Okay, so they ask us to visit a page with a recently uploaded notice in light of the huge interest they received from the news article..."

"Wow so that article did attract a lot of attention.. it wasn't just us"

"Okay so Eddy, I'd actually stuffed up for starters, I was looking at their faculty of Veterinary Medicine page..."

"And we shouldn't have?"

"Nope. Says here Eddy that the guy's in the faculty of Medicine..."

"What..? So he was doing medical research and crossed over to apply his findings to veterinary medicine.. wow.."

Brett clicked on the link. A new page came up. The two of them started scanning the page. It was Eddy who broke the silence first.

"Um... Brett..?"

"Yeah?"

"...isn't that a photo of Herbert von Karajan?"

"What? Where? Who?"

"In the corner of this page...Karajan... the Austrian conductor."

"..as in the ex-principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic?"

The two were both classical music enthusiasts, obvious from the fact that they'd named their cats Pag and Nini, after Niccolò Paganini, an Italian violinist.

"Yeah, him."

"Eddy, it's such a tiny photo. That could be any old dude with a conductor baton"

"Brett, c'mon. That iconic left hand and the angle of his baton. Can you get the annotation of that photo translated? Please?"

Brett shrugged and went through a few clicks with his mouse. He was secretly pleased that Eddy was becoming more and more enthusiastic about this, momentarily forgetting about the grief he was feeling before.

"....Oh my god Eddy you were absolutely right, it WAS Herbert von Karajan!!!"

Eddy slapped Brett's shoulder and grinned. The wriggling of his eyebrows said "I told you so" without any words.

"What's a pic of Herbert von Karajan doing on this university website?"

"Says here... the chief researcher.. is a classical music enthusiast.. trained in piano ...and conducting...!! Oh my god he has a photo taken with pianist Krystian Zimerman!!"

Eddy was now hunched over with his eyes so close to the monitor he was about to rub his face against it. Brett was trying to peel him off the screen screaming;

"Lemme see, lemme see!!"

The two grown men were behaving like teenagers for a while as they pushed and shoved each other trying to have a good look at the tiny photograph on the monitor.

"Oh for goodness' sake Brett, just make the bloody pic bigger by zooming in!!"

"Noooo, it's such a crappy low res pic, it'll just get all pixelated, see!?! Told ya!!"

"Wow, so a classical music enthusiast, hey? Hah, says here he contemplated quitting med school and transferring to music college...!!"

"I hope he's happy with this career choice... he's certainly had great success in medical research..."

"Says here he finds similarities in the discipline of medicine and conducting"

"How iNtErEsTiNg"

"Hey Brett.. about our donation.. Y'know how we didn't get to go to Taiwan this year because of the lockdown?"

"Yes?"

"I was wondering.. if I may donate my airfare."

Brett didn't even bat an eye.

"It's your money, you can do anything you want with it.  Okay. I'll match it. I'll put forward my airfare, too"

Eddy stared at Brett.

"..Are you sure? You don't have to match mine. Do you want to think about it first?"

"What's there to think about? It's for a great cause. An important one for both of us. For a guy who's a medical doctor turned veterinarian medicine researcher who's a classical music enthusiast? If this ain't fate I dunno what is. We just have to support this guy's cause."

Brett clicked the link for making donations, then used the translator app to convert the notice into English.

"Okay, so they had to create a link to accept donations because there's been such a strong interest.. and.. OMFG."

"What, what?? I haven't read that far yet... OMFG"

"..they got donations of more than $30K in 2 days...!! 2900 donations in 2 days... and they usually only get about 10,000 donations per year...!! "

At the bottom of the page, there were rows and rows of donation records. Some had the donor's full name, some had an alias, many must have chosen to remain anonymous. The comments section by the donors were very touching;

Thank you for your fantastic work. Please accept my donation to save future cats, in memory of mine who could not be saved.

Eddy was tearing up and smiling at the same time. But he was definitely smiling. Possibly for the first time all day. He reached out and placed his hand on Brett's.

"..Thanks for looking up all of this for me mate. This gives us hope for all living cats,  including Pag and Nini..."

Brett smiled back.

"Yeah Eddy, it certainly does."

A/N: This concludes the duology In the name of science in the Twoset Veterinarian series. Hope you enjoyed it..!!