Friday, August 15, 2014

Sad Eyes II


  
   As you may recall, our neighborhood had a small issue yesterday. A cat has been wandering around for a few days, bedraggled and shy, wearing a flea collar
. It obviously had been someone’s pet but had fallen on hard times. Either it was lost, or someone had dumped it in our neighborhood. I don’t know which makes me more sad.

          I called our animal control officer, who dropped off a humane trap and provided us with advice and information. He’s a retired state environmental police officer but learning this gave me a moment’s pause when he pulled up in a huge Mercedes SUV and left it running and spewing emissions the full twenty minutes he was here. A nice man, though, who obviously cared about animals.

          One interesting theory from him:
          “Now I’m not sayin’ anything against possums, but you get one of them in your trap, don’t worry about the rabies. Rabies goes to the brain, but possums don’t get rabies ‘cause their brain is the size of a pea!”

          So off he roared and there I was with this giant trap and the vision of dealing with the endless parade of wildlife that would be trapped in my new cage. What had I been thinking? After the first flurry of neighborhood conversations, everyone else had gone off to their day and I was the one left holding the bag trap.

          Before long, though, we had another sighting. I rushed outside, covered the metal gridded floor of the trap with newspaper as instructed, put in a dish of tuna, and put it out in our yard.

          The cat ambled across the street.

          We then moved the trap over to the neighbor’s yard and what do you know? Within thirty seconds the cat went in the trap, the door swung shut, and voila!

          Well, that was easy.

          What came next was the hard part. What to do with it.
I covered the cage per my instructions.
"What you gotta do - and this is imperative -
is you gotta cover the cage. That way he'll
think he's in a cave or a den."
It sounded more like a recipe for a happy
fox than a housecat, but okay. 

          I called every rescue center, cat feral program, and nearby vet in what seemed like a fifty mile radius and no one could/would take it.

          I knew I couldn’t keep it because Satchel would never, at this stage of his long life, tolerate another cat.


          My husband and I finally drove him to the animal shelter in the city, and the three of us waited, the cat mewing sadly and looking up at us through the bars of his cage. We filled out paperwork, to include checking the box in which we choose NOT to know the outcome, and turned him over.
          We left a donation and went home with our empty cage.
          I don’t know how in the world people work at animal shelters. 

8 comments:

  1. Oh how sad.
    Truth is it happens over and over every day. Perhaps our kitten is lucky and finds a good home.
    I hate people who abandon pets.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sad. I had a wandering cat in our yard, but she seemed to move with the hoarder family.

    ReplyDelete
  3. She really is a pretty cat. Russian blue in color. Perhaps that will bode well in her re-homing.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Oh, dear. A raggedy version of my daughters cat, Kitty (short for Katherine, because everyone would just call her kitty!). Kitty went to heaven at least ten years ago. My best wishes for your fellow.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Just after we put isabel our 15 year old girl kitty down, we went to our local (well, local to us - 2 1/2 hours away lol) shelter and adopted a sweet teenager kitty - not a kitten. We adore her, and so does our other cat, Tomaz...well that is when shes not goading him by jumping on his head and running away...i swear i can hear her giggling when she does that.

    Thank you for giving this kitty a second chance. Much better off in a shelter where there is food, water and a chance, then a coyote, car, or the worse outcome; someone who hates cats...

    ReplyDelete
  6. Poor thing. It's a very pretty cat. I couldn't have turned it over to a shelter (not judging you however). I would have just left food and water out for it, or perhaps had it fixed first and then let it go and put out food. Just about every cat I ever had (including my current cat) was a rescue.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. In a perfect world, maybe I could have followed your advice. However, the cat was walking with difficulty, had no lower teeth, and we have coyotes and fisher cats in the woods that are next to all our houses.
      The lady at the shelter evaluated him, said he'd been fixed already, and was in poor condition.
      He was a frightened housecat who came to all of our doors.
      His chances of survival on his own were thin indeed.

      Delete
  7. Bless you for taking the trouble to do what you could for this cat. He is beautiful and I hope he recovers well and someone takes him home.

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for stopping by and I'd love to hear what you think.