About three weeks ago, Mom brought home a stray cat. It didn't seem full-grown, it was missing a chunk of ear, had an ear infection, was starving, had diahrea, and would, in a matter of... if you can believe it, and no, I'm not exagerating... become obvious that she was pregnant. According to Mom, she followed her all the way from our building to the grocery store, and then when she purposely lost her, she was waiting for her at the location they'd first met.
She had to be separated from our cat, of course, for the first while, so she took lodging in my room. The first night, I woke up with her sleeping in the crook of my arm, and the next two nights, I woke up with her sleeping on my back.
It was obvious that she was accostumed to living with humans, which meant that she had had an owner, but after a week or so, I couldn't bring myself to keep trying to get rid of her.
But today, the Superintendant saw her staring out my window. Apparently a tenant had lost her. So he came over when I was at karate, apparently she let him pick her up... something she never would have let us do... and she was purring audibly on meeting him.
The guy lives right across from my window. That means that, all this time she was staring out my window at her home.
HOWEVER! That means she was right near her home when we took her in... What's she doing starving, pregnant, battle-scarred, and ear-and-stomach-infected when her home is right around the corner?
Awww... And I was having a good day. I visited Louise, which was pleasant, did some general labour and got paid for it, got my first assignment from the business, went to counseling, which ended on a good note, went to karate and got my blue stripe. I'm coming home, thinking about how this is the first day in many months that just felt good, front to back. The sun had set, and I had no plans for the rest of the night. Then I come home and this little saga had unfolded in the hour-and-a-half I'd been gone.
We're basically catnappers, I guess, since she... couldn't have been lost.
But seriously, keeping an unfixed female cat as an outdoor cat in a neighborhood full of strays? I dunno about that...
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Sad as it may seem, there are a number of people who don't seem to view pets in the same way we do. In fact, there seem to be quite a few who don't really think much more of their pets than they do of, say, a library book. (One of my friends volunteers at a vet clinic as part of her path toward becoming a vet herself and runs into these people as customers fairly often.)
ReplyDeleteIn the apartments I lived in prior to my house, one evening I came across a cat who clearly seemed to be an apartment cat. I think I was just out walking around, maybe from the car to the building. So I picked it up, put my cat in the bathroom, brought this cat inside, and checked it out. Saw the collar, found the phone number, called: no answer. Saw the address, saw it was just a few buildings down (think row houses, all joined together), so I walked the cat down there. Maybe in a cat carrier? I don't remember.
So I get there, and there's nobody there (which explains the lack of phone response). It was pretty late, so they'd have been home ... anyway, the apartment is in the back, so they have a fenced-in area out back. And there's a note on the door that basically says my cat might get out, if he does, thanks for getting him, just put him back in the fenced-in area. (It wasn't a super-tall fence, and I think maybe a cat could get out under the fence as well as over it.) So a) it had happened before, b) the owner was expecting it, and c) it was apparently okay to let the cat basically run free in an apartment complex (meaning we were more likely than the average bear to not be looking for a cat in the road), but not to have someone actually watching the cat.
whatever. I felt a little guilty returning the cat, but I had a small apartment and Calle was most definitely an only cat. (The house is decent-sized, and Calle still wants to be an only cat. Unfortunately for her it's been seven years and Josie is still here.)