Wednesday, July 23, 2008

I Was Late For Work, But I Don’t Care

I was on my way to work as normal this morning. I was heading to where my carpool buddy lives. I was almost to his house when I saw what looked like a cat in the middle of the road. I was saddened as I assumed it was a victim of traffic flow and shocked when it looked up at me with a look of absolute fear as I passed it down the middle of my car.

Well, I stopped immediately. This was a little kitten. It looked barely old enough to be out on its own. Ten weeks max and that may be a high estimate. I performed what had to be two illegal U-Turns and pulled up right next to the petrified kitten, blocking her from potential injury by oncoming traffic, and put on my hazards.

Well, I thought she was petrified. As soon as I opened the door to get her, she took shelter under the car. I looked, changed positions, looked again, and looked a third time. I couldn’t see her and thought maybe she had scampered off into the grass. By this time, there was a car behind me so I got back into the car.

Just in case, I pulled ahead v e r y s l o w l y and angled off to the side when I knew she would be clear. Sure enough, there she was, still hunkered down in the middle of the road. The car behind me saw her and did the same thing I did when I first spotted her. She was still unharmed.
Before the light turned green and the semi truck started to pull forward, I ran out and scooped her up. I checked her very quickly when I got her back in the car and there didn’t appear to be a scratch on her. On her own, she crawled up and rested on my left shoulder as I drove to my buddy’s house.

We leave for work at 6:30 in the morning. The animal shelter is not open at that time. The only thing we could think of to do was to drive 20 minutes back to my house, place her in one of my spare cat crates and ask my wife (very nicely) to take her over to the animal shelter for us.

From what I could see, the kitten was unscathed by the experience. She wasn’t even terribly shaken once I got her out of harm’s way. The wife said she was very quiet and ate a little bit before she took her to the shelter. I would have kept her but we have enough difficulty getting my 19-year-old cat and my 2-year-old cat not to fight. Plus we simply cannot afford to adopt another cat and take on the immunization costs, declawing, etc. As cute and docile as she is, I am sure someone will give her a good home.

I saved a life today. What have you done?

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