The words I'm singing now mean nothing more than meow to an animal
STRAY CAT SAGA 2007:
Last night there was a cat on our back steps and we decided to do the right thing for once and take it to a shelter. It was 3 in the morning then so my brother led it into one of our dog carrier cages and we fed it dog food. Early this morning we drove around for well over an hour trying to get to three or four different animal shelters. At first we tried our local convenient store where I thought I had seen a sign claiming a lost black and white cat, but really it was for a grey and white one. Then the shelter by us turned out to be only for dogs (so of course it makes perfect sense that their sign reads ANIMAL SHELTER and not DOG SHELTER). They gave us a list of other local shetlers and we tried driving to one that we passed the other day that I noticed advertised itself as "no kill," but northeast Ohio was hit with a thunderstorm this morning and all the roads were flooded and we couldn't reach it. The cat shelter isn't open until Friday, the other shelter had a wrong number listed on the pamphlet (so I ended up talking to some city's Safety Department) and when I did get a hold of them, they said they're not accepting any more cats because they're out of room, and then the flooded out no-kill shelter left me on hold for five minutes so I hung up. Like I said, the roads were flooded and my brother and I were driving around hitting blocked-off road after blocked-off road and all these cars were backed up and trying to find someplace to go; it was a little chaotic out there. And here we were with this cat that we could not fucking get to a shelter. My mom and brother are allergic to cats and my mom was flipped out that it might have fleas; we couldn't keep it. When we came home I called the no-kill shelter again and after being put on hold for five minutes again a woman with a Fargo-ian accent like she was some 1980s Catherine O'Hara character got on the line and curtly told me, "Friday. Try Friday."
"Call back Friday?"
"Friday. Call Friday."
I wanted to say, "What the hell am I supposed to do with the cat until Friday?" but instead I asked "You'll have room for it on Friday?"
"Don't know. Depends on adoption. Call back Friday."
END OF PHONE CALL.
We couldn't keep the cat in our house and I didn't want to leave it in the carrier anymore lest it should become fearful and distrustful, so we let the cat go in our back yard. It really didn't seem like a street cat, which was why we wanted to take it to a shelter, but there was no place for us to keep it. The cat hung around and I left it some water and the carrier outside in case it wanted to go back in there and we could maybe try again later. Later my brother -- the allergic one, who had named the cat during the night -- tried to chase it away. It ran into the street and my brother chased after it again because it wouldn't get out of the way of cars. Goddamn cat. If it was a dog we would have adopted it by now. I'm not worried about it finding food and water, I'm not worried about it definding itself against other animals, I'm only worried about cars. The point of this is: Why does the universe fuck us over when we finally try to do a good thing? Lately I've become particularly filled with worry when I see a stray and I always want to go back and help it, and this time we finally tried and no good came of it, except that the cat wasn't caught in the rainstorm. I mean, my whole family was up at four in the morning concerned about what to do with this cat and we spent nearly two hours today calling and driving to shelters in a storm and no one was any help. The shelter people were not only absolutely useless, but they weren't even polite or appreciative that we were trying to get a stray off the streets so it wouldn't make more kittens for them to deny their facilities to.
This is like last spring when my mom -- who's ass-broke and whose husband is dying -- took her first vacation in a decade and ended up in a Florida hospital for three days with something like food poisoning.
Fuck you, universe.
Last night there was a cat on our back steps and we decided to do the right thing for once and take it to a shelter. It was 3 in the morning then so my brother led it into one of our dog carrier cages and we fed it dog food. Early this morning we drove around for well over an hour trying to get to three or four different animal shelters. At first we tried our local convenient store where I thought I had seen a sign claiming a lost black and white cat, but really it was for a grey and white one. Then the shelter by us turned out to be only for dogs (so of course it makes perfect sense that their sign reads ANIMAL SHELTER and not DOG SHELTER). They gave us a list of other local shetlers and we tried driving to one that we passed the other day that I noticed advertised itself as "no kill," but northeast Ohio was hit with a thunderstorm this morning and all the roads were flooded and we couldn't reach it. The cat shelter isn't open until Friday, the other shelter had a wrong number listed on the pamphlet (so I ended up talking to some city's Safety Department) and when I did get a hold of them, they said they're not accepting any more cats because they're out of room, and then the flooded out no-kill shelter left me on hold for five minutes so I hung up. Like I said, the roads were flooded and my brother and I were driving around hitting blocked-off road after blocked-off road and all these cars were backed up and trying to find someplace to go; it was a little chaotic out there. And here we were with this cat that we could not fucking get to a shelter. My mom and brother are allergic to cats and my mom was flipped out that it might have fleas; we couldn't keep it. When we came home I called the no-kill shelter again and after being put on hold for five minutes again a woman with a Fargo-ian accent like she was some 1980s Catherine O'Hara character got on the line and curtly told me, "Friday. Try Friday."
"Call back Friday?"
"Friday. Call Friday."
I wanted to say, "What the hell am I supposed to do with the cat until Friday?" but instead I asked "You'll have room for it on Friday?"
"Don't know. Depends on adoption. Call back Friday."
END OF PHONE CALL.
We couldn't keep the cat in our house and I didn't want to leave it in the carrier anymore lest it should become fearful and distrustful, so we let the cat go in our back yard. It really didn't seem like a street cat, which was why we wanted to take it to a shelter, but there was no place for us to keep it. The cat hung around and I left it some water and the carrier outside in case it wanted to go back in there and we could maybe try again later. Later my brother -- the allergic one, who had named the cat during the night -- tried to chase it away. It ran into the street and my brother chased after it again because it wouldn't get out of the way of cars. Goddamn cat. If it was a dog we would have adopted it by now. I'm not worried about it finding food and water, I'm not worried about it definding itself against other animals, I'm only worried about cars. The point of this is: Why does the universe fuck us over when we finally try to do a good thing? Lately I've become particularly filled with worry when I see a stray and I always want to go back and help it, and this time we finally tried and no good came of it, except that the cat wasn't caught in the rainstorm. I mean, my whole family was up at four in the morning concerned about what to do with this cat and we spent nearly two hours today calling and driving to shelters in a storm and no one was any help. The shelter people were not only absolutely useless, but they weren't even polite or appreciative that we were trying to get a stray off the streets so it wouldn't make more kittens for them to deny their facilities to.
This is like last spring when my mom -- who's ass-broke and whose husband is dying -- took her first vacation in a decade and ended up in a Florida hospital for three days with something like food poisoning.
Fuck you, universe.