what would you do

[crier]

shawowsR, thank you for your good advice. i agree with all you say. i regret i cannot deliver a happily-ever-after ending to the story, as you will see.

shadowk, your leash idea is clever and very good. although, the only time i tried a cat on a leash (with a harness) it easily escaped the restraint.

 

[shadowsrescue]

 
shawowsR, thank you for your good advice. i agree with all you say. i regret i cannot deliver a happily-ever-after ending to the story, as you will see.

shadowk, your leash idea is clever and very good. although, the only time i tried a cat on a leash (with a harness) it easily escaped the restraint.

Is everything ok?  I hope Rachel is still in your care.

 

[crier]

after two nights with the cat i rose determined to return to where i'd found her. i owed it to myself, her and her kittens, if it wasn't too late, to see what i could find out.

i arranged my day so that i might pass by the intersection again, about 45 minutes from home. i did my best to assure her comfort in the stuffy room where i kept her before wishing her a good day and leaving out.

that afternoon i found the intersection and turned off the pavement onto dirt, as i had the first time.

i knew a bit about what to expect, for, i must apologize but in telling the story as i have so far, i left out a small part.

namely, that after i had put the cat into my car originally, and after i'd sat there for a long time wondering what to do, i was desperate to relieve myself. and not in the easy way.

so when i said originally i made a u-turn before heading home with the cat, the truth is, the U was quite long. i went about a mile down the lonely dirt road, to where it crested on a gentle hill and i could see a long way in either direction.

and there, assured that no vehicles were coming, like a cat in a litter box i squatted at the side of the road.

during that detour i had seen two houses. a modest, junky dwelling in the woods not far from where i found the cat, and the other, considerably farther from the highway, a farmhouse.

why had i not stopped at either when i had picked up the cat?

as for the small house in the woods, i simply thought that nobody who had a cat nursing kittens would let it get so hungry that it would set out to find and eat roadkill. surely whoever lived in this house would know nothing about the cat, i had told myself.

and, so concluding, i had felt that maybe the cat had come from the farm, which appeared to be abandoned. no vehicles were outside the house, the fields were fallow, and the barns were empty save for old rusting machinery.

so when i returned to investigate, two days after picking up the cat, i felt my best hope was to search the abandoned farm's barns. maybe there i would be lucky enough to find the kittens.

even so, i decided to stop first at the house in the woods. it couldn't hurt to ask, if anyone was there to ask.

i pulled into the driveway of the  slipping-down structure, outside of which sat a disabled vehicle and much other clutter. i exited the car and approached the dwelling.

to my perplexity on the concrete slab of a front porch was another white cat, and near it a number of kittens. a half dozen at least, most of them white. in the yard nearby was another adult cat, a brown-and-tan tortie.

on the porch was a food dish or two, empty.

the kittens were tiny but their eyes were open. i picked up the one nearest to me, an orange thing, held it to my chest and stroked it. i stood there for several minutes, trying to put the clues together.

as the white cat on the porch realized i seemed to mean no harm, it came toward me, and with it a number of the other kittens.

as one who believes all animals are precious and who has a special soft spot for cats and even softer one for kittens, i noticed right away these kittens were not well tended. their ears were black inside and their eyes surrounded with gunk.

presently a man of about 40 emerged from the house, a bit alarmed at my presence.

"what's going on?" he said, some urgency in his voice.

"hello," i said cheerfully. "i am sorry to bother you. but i picked up a white cat from the highway the other day, and..."

"so that's where she went," the man said.

despite everything, his worlds came to me as good news -- the cat over whose kittens i had been so worried was owned, had a home, and had been missed.

"oh, so she's your cat," i said with gladness in my voice. "and these are her kittens?"

"don't worry," the man said. "i've been feeding them."

he told me that the white kittens belonged to the cat i taken, and the two kittens who were not white were from the tortie.

he said he had lived at the house for 20 years, and the white cat on the porch was "last year's cat," and the one i had taken home was born two years ago.

i've long known that not everyone takes care of cats as i might wish, even people who claim to love cats. i was realizing this was a case in point.

i proceeded as gently as i could.

"so, basically, you give them food, but then it's survival of the fittest?"  i asked. "what happens to them?"

"they turn up missing," he said.

immediately i thought that's what cats do when they get sick, if given the choice. they go hide and die, often miserably.

"i think male cats come around and kill the male kittens," he said. "and i think maybe hawks get some of them, at least the white ones."

i nodded.

confronted with this heartbreaking information, i managed only to acknowledge what the man had just said. and it seemed he was realizing he'd already said too much.

i pondered that the white kittens had not been well tended by their mother perhaps because she was too hungry do the things mama cats do, like licking their ears and eyes clean.

"you realize the kittens have ear mites," i said. "surely that must be agony..."

"i have stuff for that," he said, nodding with his head toward the garage. "it's mineral oil..."

"that won't work," i said. "do you have anything like Tresaderm? i could drop some off..."

"that's ok," he said.

"i really would be happy to bring you some, " i said, ignoring the thought of how expensive was just a small bottle of it, and how broke i was am a rule.

"i know you would," he said, but in that sentence his tone changed from frank admission to ire.

"what i don't like," he said angrily, "is you coming into my yard and telling me how to run things."

"i'm sorry," i said as he turned toward the house. "i understand."

he thanked me for stopping, though his tone told me to get off the property. i said "thank you" as i watched him go back inside his home.

i returned to the car and left.

as i drove home, i pondered that he hadn't asked me -- or hadn't demanded -- that i return his cat.

did he want her? surely he did, i thought. he had kept her alive for two years, and as i've said earlier, she was emaciated but otherwise not in bad shape.

the kittens and cats had not run from me.they were not wild. they were ... pets.

i concluded that the man perhaps felt unjustified in demanding i return a cat in such condition to such a setting as i'd seen.

and yet, realizing the kittens were surely missing their mother, it became clear to me what i would do.  i stopped on the way home and bought a big bag of kitten chow.

"i think we'll take you home in the morning," i said on my last evening with the cat who had entered my life by crossing a busy country highway in front of my car.

when the new day came i put her in the back seat of the car, in an open plastic carrier, and she rode without complaint. i returned once more to the intersection, praying for her and her young ones as i did.

pregoinhome.jpg

• crier
• Jul 22, 2014

goinhome.jpg

• crier
• Jul 22, 2014

once back onto the dirt road i pulled over to the roadside near the house, stopped the car, got out, and put the cat out.

i stood and watched as she wandered a bit, evidently unsure of where she was and why this was happening, but then she suddenly realized where she was and headed without hesitation straight up the dirt driveway.

as she did so, an aging green SUV with an older woman at the wheel turned off the highway and came down the road, passing me as it turned into the driveway. maybe this was the mother of the man i'd met. maybe he was in the passenger seat, i didn't notice.

as the woman parked the vehicle at the house, i quickly took from my trunk the bag of kitten chow and straddled it atop the mailbox before hastening back to the car, turning it around and driving home.