Thursday, May 28, 2009

The One Where Kim Gives Her Neighbor's Cat to the SPCA


The title will be meaningless to anyone who never was aware of the titles of "Friends" episodes.

ANYWHO....today, I got home from running some errands, not too long before Aaron arrived home from school.  He came home and went out back to get his bike and a moment later he comes flying in the house.

"Mom!  There's a cat out here!"

"You can't have it.  We have six."

"No, it looks really bad."

So I went out to the deck and there was a shabby looking white cat.  She was incredibly thin and rather dirty, and had a lot of gunk around one eye, so I immediately went inside to get her food and water.  She took a nibble or two of food and then walked over to the other side of the deck and laid down, looking a bit spaced out.

"Aaron, this doesn't look real good.  I think she is either sick or old or both, and we are leaving for England next week, so we can't exactly nurse a sickly cat."

I called my friend Kelly to see if there was any option other than the SPCA.  No, not so much.  Cat rescue maybe but if the cat wasn't healthy, they probably would not take it.  So I called the SPCA and arranged to drop the kitty off there, explaining to Aaron that this was the best thing.  The SPCA would have a vet look at the kitty and if it was sick or suffering and needed to put down, at least she would not be dying a slow and miserable death outside in the rain.

The cat was so lethargic, it gave us no trouble getting her into the carrier and then we headed to the SPCA.  Kitty did not utter a sound the whole way there, where any of my six felines would be yelling their lungs out.  We signed her over and the tech at the desk agreed with me that the cat looked pretty sick and that a vet would look at her tonight.  Aaron and I then took a stroll through the SPCA as he had never been there before (honey, they had an adorable lab/rottie pup!) and then headed back home.

A few hours passed and then Aaron came back in the house.

"Mom, you know our new neighbor?"

"Yeah?"

"Her white cat is missing."

Damn.

So I sent him down to explain what happened and then I spoke to the neighbor on the phone, who was very nice about the whole situation.  She said the cat was actually a little sick and pretty old (around 17) and she had just picked it up from her former home in PA today.  She had put kitty on her back porch while she went out to run errands, assuming the cat would not go anywhere (????) and she did.  To our deck.  Of course, me being me, I do not let my kitties outside, though we do have a few neighbors with outside cats.  I explained to the neighbor that as I had never seen this cat before and because of how bad she looked, I was afraid for her anyway, plus there were other outside cats who could easily kick the kitty's butt in a fight.

But she called the SPCA and they hadn't even processed kitty yet, so it should not even cost her to get kitty back.  I guess a lot of people would have just left the cat alone on the deck, but I couldn't do it because she looked so bad and I can't bear to see anything suffer.

Guess next time we need to knock on some doors.



2 comments:

  1. I must laugh. Back when I started dating hubby, he acquired Spunky. He had her like 3 days and she disappeared. 3 days later he's at the grocery store and runs into his neighbors. He happens to mention the cat...and guess what? They assumed it was a stray and took it to the SPCA. He went and got her (cost $15) they even had named her Daisy!!

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  2. I'm cracking up over both the title (I got the reference) and the whole story. That is just something that you couldn't make up... the truth is often FAR funnier than fiction. :-)

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