The following is a cat saga.
A stray cat turned up in my neighborhood about six months ago. She was a tiny little mangy ball of fuzz who followed everyone around making irritable feedmefeedmepetmepayattentiontomedamnit noises at them. She was obviously a shiftless punk and probably beating up our housecats when we weren't looking, but wasn't she sweet? So of course we were thrilled when she started hanging out full-time with the neighbors two houses up. They were feeding her, they were taking care of her, she was looking healthier and fluffier and clearly everything was great.
About two months ago we found out that possibly everything wasn't as great as previously imagined. The guys up the street were feeding her, but they had an allergic roommate and couldn't let her in, and they hadn't had her spayed or vaccinated. Maybe, we heard through the grapevine, they weren't even going to keep her. My upstairs neighbor and I snapped to attention when we heard this. Our ball of fluff must not go to the pound!, we declared, and talked our respective roommates into a cat-sharing scheme. We'd take her to the vet, she could come and go from the cottage and upstairs, and as long as we split the food and vet costs it wouldn't be totally prohibitive.
My upstairs neighbor ran this scheme past the guys two houses up, and came back to report that they were balking. They didn't think she needed an indoor home or vet care, and they wanted her to stay with them. You're trying to tame a wild spirit, we were told by proxy, she's fine the way she is. We stomped our feet and railed at their complacence and negligence, and sent the upstairs neighbor back to talk to them again.
Finally we thought we'd reached an agreement. She'd still be the neighborhood's outdoor cat; we wouldn't hijack her for ourselves. We'd take her to the vet, though, and split the costs three ways between the cottage household, the upstairs household, and the up-the-street household. We didn't need another cat anyway (and neither did the upstairs neighbors), but she did need proper care. Jacob and I called around, made appointments, took afternoons off and took her in for her shots on Friday. We nodded somewhat sheepishly when the vets told us how sweet it was that we were bringing this cat in when no one else would.
We came back from the animal hospital on Friday afternoon, with an inoculated cat and instructions to keep her inside for a few hours. Since we had guests and plans for the evening we thought we'd try asking the guys up the street if they could maybe just let her inside for the one afternoon. We headed up to their house and ran into one of them on his way out. "Hey," we told him, "we just took the orange cat to the vet for her shots."
"You did?" he asked. "Because we made her an appointment for next week."
Now you fucking do this?
Posted by dianna at March 28, 2005 02:47 PM