Welcome to Gaia! :: View User's Journal | Gaia Journals

I rescued a cat yesterday. Sort of. See, on Thursday, my room mate and I walked to a nearby store, and saw a cat we thought we recognized. There was this big tubby cat that hung out in a particular location that would let us pet it. We thought the one we saw on Thursday was that cat because it looked so similar. It was just as friendly as the other one and came up to let us pet it, and that’s when we found out how skinny it was. From a distance, it looks fine. When you touch it, all of its bones can be felt. And we noticed it had problems walking on its back feet properly. We would have taken the cat home right then, but we worried about being fined or something for stealing someone’s pet. Then again, the jackass that let the animal get to that state would also probably be charged with something, or never step up to claim it in the first place. Anyway, we left the cat there, promising to send help in the form of the humane society. Roomy called the humane society the next day and they said they wouldn’t just waste resources sending someone out to the location for an animal that isn’t secured in one location. I understand that. Not only could the animal wander off, but they could also get trolls calling in or something. So we decided to go back and get the cat so we could hand it over to get help. My room mate also walked back up to the store in the morning and looked around for the cat as he did. Instead of finding the one we found earlier, he found the tubby one we’d seen and petted before. I was rather glad the two cats weren’t the same. I don’t know why, but when I see a healthy animal waste away when they used to be so healthy, it makes it worse.

Anyway, later on Friday, it rained, so we didn’t go searching for the cat, because we assumed it would have hid somewhere. Saturday I worked for the old lady, and afterwards I went looking for the cat on my own. I found it along with the tubby one hanging out around an abandoned and condemned building. It took me about half an hour to figure out what to do, since the cat wouldn’t let me just pick it up and carry it home. I put my coat over the animal, and used that to keep it from getting away. I felt bad taking the cat because the other one seemed so confused and didn’t want me to take its buddy, and even followed me a short distance. The walk also felt like a longer one than it really was, and I kept thinking someone was going to shout at me about stealing their cat. Some punches would have been thrown if that had happened, but it didn’t, though I’m sure I got some weird looks from anyone who saw me. I put the cat in a separate room from my own pets so no one could pick on one another, or get into a fight. And of course, the cat was terrified. I can understand that mentality. Not knowing what’s going on and why they were taken away from their buddy and possibly home or territory. But then I opened a can of wet food and gave the cat some, and it immediately became calm, and went back to being the sweetie pie my room mate and I met before. The animal is well behaved and so very loving, though it doesn’t really want to sit in my or my room mate’s lap.

This morning my room mate called the humane society and they said to wait until Monday to call animal control who would pick up the cat and bring it to them. They said to do that because animal control rarely picks up the phone on Sundays. So I’ve been taking care of the cat for about a day, and feeling horribly guilty about separating the two cats. At the moment, my room mate and I are thinking about going out and getting the other one because it’s always outside and it is still hanging out at the abandoned building. My room mate also saw that someone had tossed food on the steps of the building, which is probably where the cats were getting food. The healthier one probably got to the food faster and ate faster than the skinny one because of whatever is wrong with its feet. Or, because the food is thrown on the steps of the building, the skinny one can’t get to the food that’s too high because it can’t climb the steps. Or maybe the food thing is recent... Whatever is going on, the other one probably needs to be picked up too. Either we get the thing tonight and hand it over tomorrow, or we show them where the cat is when we call animal control tomorrow. We haven’t really decided what to do yet.

And though I know it’s a good thing to help the cat out, I’m worried about handing it over. It isn’t doing well. Weight can always be regained, but the legs are a big problem. If they can’t do anything to fix the problem or if it costs too much to fix the problem, they’d put the cat down. I know it’s something that has to be done so others can be saved, it’s just hard to accept after I’ve spent time with the cat. I keep telling myself that I should look on the bright side and say at least the cat got some love from me and my roomie even if it is put down, but it doesn’t really help.

Ever since I’ve been dealing with the cat thing, I haven’t been able to focus very well on anything else, so I’m going to end things in this entry here. I’ll go over other sh*t that I missed this week, next week.

WC:
F01 = 13693