Tag Archives: Cats

Thanks Fido, It Was a Rhetorical Question

20 Wednesday Jul 2016

Posted by in Animals

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This was many years back, and it may be too much information, but I still think it’s a funny story. Sad to say, it’s not fiction

***

Fido

The Culprit

How low can you sink in life?

That was my question, sitting there on the toilet seat, staring at the roll of toilet paper standing upright on the floor in front of me, my last roll of toilet paper.

…and realizing it was damned near out.

My cats were there to help me of course, as they always are when I head to the bathroom, but neither Fido nor Junkmail had any special skill in toilet-paper assessment. They flittered about my feet a little while before sliding one by one out the door and leaving me to ponder this new dilemma all by myself.

Would it be enough?

And might I need more before the day was out?

I knew I was also out of napkins, because I had used a bit of toilet paper for a napkin the night before. Presumably, I didn’t have any paper towels either. I would certainly have used one of those at dinner, if it’d been available.

So much for the store bought stuff!

I wondered if a few extra napkins from a fast food joint might be tucked away in a coat pocket somewhere, or perhaps stuffed into a space near the computer. Could I have set one to the side while downing a burger?

Maybe.

But of course, getting through the crisis of the moment was one thing; living through the next couple days was another. I really didn’t want to spend the five dollars remaining in my wallet on a package of toilet paper. So, this was a tough call.

I thought perhaps I could walk over to the mall and use their toilet, but wow! That’s desperation. When you can’t afford your own toiletries, you know life hasn’t turned out the way you planned.

I supposed I could get a single roll at the store for a little over a dollar if I remembered the prices correctly. That would leave me with about 4 dollars for other things. I preferred to buy in bulk, but that was no longer an option, much less a preference. In toiletries too, the inefficiencies of poverty prevail, even for those of us with no valid excuses for being poor. I had long since lost count of the stupid mistakes that had put me in this situation.

“Idiot!”

There was nothing feigned about that little moment of self-contempt. I was pretty pissed at myself. How much worse can things get I wondered, as I reached for the roll? How much more pathetic?

In a blaze of black and cream-colored fur, Fido flew into the room, tackled the roll and tumbled into the far corner of the bathroom just out a little beyond the reach of my hand. His claws and teeth whirled furiously about for a second or two before he darted out the door just as quickly as he’d entered it.

And there I sat, my hand still extended, staring at the pile of shreds that had formerly been my last roll of toilet paper.

 

Black Hats and White Hats, Boomerang Bills, and Homeless Pets

29 Saturday Nov 2014

Posted by in Animals

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022

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“Are you a no-kill shelter?” the woman asked as she readied a $20.00 bill for the donation box? The honest answer was ‘no,’ and my explanation didn’t help matters much, …at all really. With one corner already inside the box that twenty dollar bill did a U-Turn and headed straight back to the woman’s purse. Our consolation prize was a $5.00 bill.

And I thanked her.

…the bitch!

I’m writing that now, because I sure as Hell wasn’t going to say it then (yes I do feel better). That wasn’t the only irritating moment that I recall from the year and a half I worked at a local Humane Association, but I suppose this is to be expected.  There is indeed something terrible about a conventional will-kill shelter. Looking at it from the perspective of the lady above, I had effectively told her that the organization I worked for killed perfectly healthy kittens and puppies, …and that I wanted money so that we could continue doing so. Under the circumstances, I suppose I should have been damned thankful to get a five.

Seriously, what a bastard!

It’s tough to find a sound patch of middle ground on some issues and this is one of them.

I had that job for about a year and a half, and this was hardly the first time I’d taken grief from someone in favor of no-kill shelters. There was the volunteer who wouldn’t step foot in our shelter. There were the interviews that ALWAYS raised questions about euthanasia, even when that was clearly not the issue at hand. And then there were the phone calls, the ones that went something like this; “I don’t want to bring him to you, but no-one else will take him, what do I do?” And of course there were countless times I heard people describe themselves as rescuing an animal from us, often one we had been at great pains to keep alive.

But this was all pretty minor stuff really. All in a day’s work.

I have to admit that it got a little under my skin the day that a volunteer from the local low-kill shelter told me with a smile that she heard her own shelter had just saved 12 cats from us. See, the problem was that we had plenty of room at the time, and none of these animals were in danger. In fact, giving them 12 cats had left our own cat kennels near to empty. We had given the cats to the other shelter because they were suddenly short felines, and I knew damn well the reason they were suddenly short. It wasn’t a pretty story.  I wanted desperately to tell the volunteer that her shelter hadn’t saved any animals by taking them off our hands on that day. Not at all.

Ah well!

This young lady doesn’t get called a name. She didn’t know. And anyhow I don’t feel as cranky as I did 3 or 4 paragraphs back. Still that was a bitter pill to swallow. Suffice to say I thought for a time there that a companion animal stood a better chance at our own will-kill shelter than they did with our low-kill counterpart. If I am hearing right lately, it sounds like the latter has cleaned up its act and both shelters are working together more lately. That’s a very good thing.

What bothers me about no-kill shelters is not the way they actually work, when they actually work at any rate; it is that their rhetoric tends to work just as well regardless of the details on the ground so to speak. If that woman with her twenty dollar bill really understood how our shelter worked and decided we weren’t a worthy recipient for her money, I would have been fine with that decision. But she didn’t. What she knew was one thing; we were the bad guys and that was about all there was to it.

I also remember a day that we ran out of room in our dog kennels and the local low-kill had been among the organizations that took a few off our hands. They took two, a pit bull and one other dog. I had been so relieved, because all of us loved that pit bull, even though she had been with us 6 months. At last she was safe, …except she wasn’t. Both of those animals ended up getting put down. And I never called the low-kill shelter again, not to help us keep one of our animals alive at any rate.

All of this had already happened on that day when a twenty climbed back into that woman’s purse and sent a five to take its place. I couldn’t help but wonder if the lady knew where people took their pets when the low-kill ran out of space? I also wondered if she knew just how many animals did get put down over there? Or if she could wrap her mind around just how many more animals we took care of on a fraction of their budget, all without the privilege of selective admissions. I’m guessing she didn’t. To her, I was a black hat. The other fifteen bucks were presumably looking to make their home with a white hat.

Circumstances vary from one community to the next, but in that community at that particular time there were exactly two-shelters in the area; one low-kill and one will-kill. The low-kill had begun with aspirations of no-kill policies and still maintained enough ties with the no-kill movement benefit from its reputation. We were open to any animal someone wanted to bring in; they could and did turn problem animals down. When they filled up, we got the overflow. When we filled up, first we turned to the phones, then we turned to the needles.

What so few of the local no-kill advocates in town seemed to realize was that when we were putting animals down it really was a community affair. If we were putting healthy animals down, odds were high that both shelters were full and all the fosters in town were overflowing. Hell, by then more than a few kind-hearted people had already taken more home than they could afford to feed. It really wasn’t a decision made in a vacuum, and when an adoptable animal went down it was literally because we couldn’t find anyone with the will and the resources to care for it.

By the time I left the shelter I had long since come to think of the total impact of the two shelters in terms of the total animal population for the region. We were in competition for resources and public support, but both shelters contributed to the overall care of animals throughout the region. Our shelter was more efficient, but they could offer a reasonably higher guarantee of survival for any animal successfully placed with them.

…at least they could when they had their act in gear.

In some ways the competition between our shelters may have improved the odds of survival for the unwanted animals of the town. The no-kill movement was a positive force at our own shelter and I knew it. It was one of the reasons we partnered with Petsmart and Petco, went to countless adoption events, advertised adoptions widely, and even began working with Foster agencies. No-kill advocates had developed a lot of the techniques we used to help adopt out our animals, and pressure from such advocates had helped to ensure we used them. In that respect at least, no kill had a very positive impact on our own shelter. Still, some of its advocates could prove damned clueless about the details of animal welfare.

If anyone really wanted to help the animals in our region, a dollar in our donation box was at least as good as it was in that of the local low-kill shelter.

Arguably better at the time.

But you can’t tell some people that.

I mean you really can’t.

Not Raised by Wolves, but Damned Close!

14 Friday Jun 2013

Posted by in Animals, Childhood

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Legs, Rover, and Spooner

Legs, Rover, and Spooner

The worst thing Johnny Cash’s dad ever did to him was to name him ‘Sue’; the worst thing my Dad ever did to me was to teach the family parrot my name.

Okay, so one of those is a fictional event; the other taught me just how far the voice of a young parrot can reach. All the way down the block, it would seem, and ‘Ginger’ could keep it up for hours.

It was in some small way, poetic justice to learn that Ginger would attack Dad whenever he came near me as I was sleeping. I used to put her on the couch when I took a nap so she would be quiet. She allowed no-one near me, especially not Dad. It’s hardly the first time an animal had appointed itself my protector, but there was something especially impressive about that little green bird charging full tilt at someone umpteen times her size. Lessons in loyalty, huh?

In the end Ginger turned out to be a guy-parrot, and he became unmanageable when he finally reached maturity. We found him a home better prepared to take care of him. I can only hope he is still doing well today. …and yes, I still think of him as a her; it’s kinda weird, I know.

(Click to embiggen)

What has me thinking about this is a notion I recently had about my days in Navajo country. I often heard from older folks that sheep used to raise the children out there. This theme was usually mixed in with one of those declensionist narratives about the loss of culture and those gosh-darned kids! Older folks always have such stories, but some of them are more interesting than others.

I always thought the livestock-as-nanny theme was an interesting twist on this kind of story, not the least of reasons being that the difference between the adults I spoke with and the younger generation did seem to include this one very real difference. Many of the older folks (and here I would include people in their 30s and 40s as well as ‘elders’) out there really had grown-up herding sheep and goats, and evidently they found this to be a valuable learning experience. Few if any of the younger kids out there in the mid 90s had had this experience. Hell, they likely had the same baby-sitter I did as a kid, …the TV. That was one very real difference between different generations of Diné, and it always struck me as a big one.

Listening to folks tell me this story, I could well imagine a lone child (or perhaps a few cousin-brothers) out alone with a flock, responsible for its welfare. I could imagine hours of time spent with sheep and goats for company, and I couldn’t help but wonder how that might shape a developing young mind. I still wonder how very different childhood must have been for a generation growing up without it.

A sheep may be an odd baby-sitter, but so is a television.

The notion that animals could help to raise a person always struck me as a profound lesson, but it always seemed to me a lesson about the lives of others. It was only recently that I came to think of this as more generally applicable, perhaps even something that might shed a little light on my own life. A few weeks back I was studying the many scars on my hands, most of which I got from playing with a pair of Siamese-mixed Kittens (‘Boots’ and ‘Rover’) we got when I was a kid. I hadn’t even earned the majority of these scars due to anger, just from many hours of play. Like most boys my age, my elbows were bloody from about the age of 6 to maybe 12 or so. But my hands also had little claw scars for most of that time as well. Most of them were small and shallow, just enough to tell me ‘gotcha’ with a sort of wink, but some were big and deep, because sometimes a cat is done playing. Anyway, I always seemed to have such scars on my hands when I was younger.

RanchinColorado2The point is that I spent a lot of time with the family pets, especially between the ages of 4 and 8, when for some reason my family moved to a ranch in Southern Colorado. I had no human playmates within walking distance, well except for a trio of girls that lived down the way for a couple years, but they were, well, …girls! I preferred to ride my horse or play with the cats. Recently, I’ve come to wonder just what kind of marks they have left on me?

…besides the literal ones, I mean.

Is there any sense in which the family pets raised me? If I had to guess, I would say that my sense of humor is to some degree the legacy of those cats, right down to the moments when it fails me. My verbal play is in some ways a reflection of my days playing with those cats. In particular, I am thinking about the way a cat will assess your intent, the way it trusts a playmate up to a point. …and the way things can get ugly fast when you’ve reached that point. Wrestling with a cat is a real test of goodwill, and you are always one menacing gesture away from one of those deep scars, so to speak. I spent a good chunk of my childhood playing on those terms, and I suppose I have internalized them. So, maybe Boots and Rover did raise me.

…or would it be more accurate to say that we grew up together? Either way; they left their mark.

We also had a small pack of dogs on that ranch, and kept the pack for many years after, but I honestly don’t think these guys had quite the same impact on me. I understood the big dogs and how to keep on their good side, and the little ones were always good company. I loved each of the family pets, and I always felt a little more comfortable in their presence, but my interactions with the family dogs were nowhere near as intense as those with my cats.

Thai Ling

Thai Ling, August of 66

Of course we also had an older Siamese, named Thai Ling. This cat was beautiful, but he had quite a temper. My older brother and sister still tell stories about a terrible event involving a dresser drawer and plenty of blood spilled upon opening it. No-one disputes that the cat had been stuffed in the drawer. Who put him there is still up for debate.As I understand it, poor Thai Ling may have helped one of my siblings with a few experiments testing the nature of gravity and cat-reflexes.

I never held it against Thai Ling that he was so cranky. Mostly, I left him alone, or stuck to petting him, which was dangerous enough. It is entirely possible that Thai Ling is responsible for at least a few of the scars on my hand. I certainly didn’t play much with that old guy.

Just what I did to earn my parents wrath, I will never know, but I am fairly convinced that the Shetland Pony was an attempt to do me in. I couldn’t have been older than 5 or 6 when this creature came into my life, and the worst thing about him was the child-like reins that I was given to ride him with. These reins had a closed loop at the end, presumably so that it would stay on his neck whenever I let go of them. The problem was that I never did let go of them, even when ‘Scooper’ would suddenly drop his head down to eat some grass. The reigns weren’t that long, and so I would inevitably go tumbling over Scooper’s head and onto the grass in front of him, coming up with my cowboy hat down around my then bawling eyes, asking someone to help me up.

…and this tragedy would repeat itself until the adults in my life grew tired of watching it.

Meonapony

Me on a Pony, Neither Scooper nor Little Bit.

Later, my parents bought got a Welsh Morgan for me. I wanted to call her her ‘Blacky’, but somehow she ended up with the name ‘Little Bit’. I had completely forgotten that name as I wrote this, btw, had to come back and edit the post). Little Bit was a good horse. …except when she decided to head to the barn. If she and I had a dispute over which direction to go, Little Bit always won. My brother once gave me a stick to use as incentive, but I wouldn’t have it. So, I continued to lose the argument with Little Bit until we moved to California and gave her away.

One lesson Little did teach me was how to make the best of a bad situation. If I could coax her all the way to the far corner of the ranch, taking advantage of all the twists and turns in our fence line, then I could point her towards the barn, give her a quick giddy-up kick, and enjoy the ride of my life.

Now THAT was fun!

In time, I got a couple dogs of my own. There was ‘Legs’. Someone brought Legs to my family announcing that he was a Doberman Pincher that had been hit by a car. He was wrapped in a blanket, so we didn’t see much at first. The ears on legs seemed rather large, but none of us knew how big an uncut Dobbie’s ears were supposed to be anyway. He never did outgrow the limp that earned him that name. Legs became my dog as time went on, and mostly I remember playing chase with him for hours. He limped, but he could manage speed when he needed to. …or wanted to. Damned if that dog did not wasn’t an expert at tripping me; then he’d run away cause then I was ‘it’ so to speak. We learned one very important detail about him that first night though. He dragged himself to the door and began howling at the top of his lungs. Suddenly, the big floppy ears made a bit more sense.

…and Dad said; “that’s no doberman.”

Another of the pack that came to be mine was a Peekapoo (Pekinese-Poodle combination) named “Midget.” …okay, some of these names suck, but that wasn’t her fault. Anyway this dog was the closest to a pure-breed that I ever owned. Mom and Dad bought her at a pet store, something I would never do in a million years today (give me a pound-mutt any day, dog or cat, …no offense to Midget). She was a sweetie, and I taught her to play fetch. …she taught me never to do that again. Seriously, that dog would try and play fetch with me for hours on end. Course I may have let that lesson slip with Auto-Kitty. She’s rather fond of fetch.

In fact, I swear to the Invisible Pink Unicorn that Auto-Kitty used to play catch with me. She could toss a toy right to me, and for awhile she did. Now she makes me come get it. And I guess it’s okay that she fetches, because she doesn’t wear me out with the game. If only she didn’t choose 3am as her favorite time to play it.

I would be remiss if I left out one other significant non-human from my childhood, the truck. We never gave it a name, and I never did learn it’s gender, but I recall learning to drive on this thing. Dad would put me in the driver’s seat as he and my siblings tossed bails of hay into the back. They’d shout; “stand on the pedal” and “stand on the brake” as we moved down the row of hay, then someone would get in and turn it around to go back the other way, and I would go back into the driver’s seat.

Love this old truck.

Love this old truck.

Later, Dad would have me drive the truck on the dirt roads to the dump. I used to love going to the dump, partly because I would get to drive and partly because we always went shooting for awhile afterward. Dump-day was the highlight of the week.

We still had the truck when I started college. I still remember driving around with a couple classmates, chattering away as we descended down some hill. One friend kept trying to interrupt me, his tone getting progressively more urgent; ‘Dan! …Dan!” I was too busy making some point about who knows what. Finally, my friend shouted out, “Dan, seriously, is this thing going to stop?” …I hadn’t even thought about it. I was pumping the brakes, which is what I had to to before any stop. My poor friend saw me doing this as we approached an intersection and became convinced he was about to die. Had to flutter the gas pedal to get it to start, too, and that freaked him out a little more. For me it was just another drive; for that friend it was like a horror-show.

Anyway, that truck had personality; it was a family member for a couple decades.

Still can’t believe Dad sold it!

So, what have we learned today? Well, I suppose we’ve learned that family pictures can lead to a serious bout of nostalgia. We also learned that a dog will wear you out playing fetch, but a cat will just wait till you fall asleep to initiate the game…and well, I suppose I was trying for something more profound.

I’m afraid most of my anecdotes don’t quite live up to the promise of the initial question. I do think that most of us underestimate the impact that animals have on us. We may care for them, but we don’t quite give them credit for shaping our personalities. Typically, most people talk about raising and training dogs and cats, or about putting up with their behavior. We may jokingly refer to a pet training us in some way, but folks seldom take the prospect all that seriously. But pets leave their marks on us in all sorts of ways. Sometimes it’s a scar on your hands; sometimes it’s a sense of responsibility for caring for them, and sometimes their legacy is a little more intangible.

The pets you grow up with would seem to be especially important; jut as you are learning how to relate to other people, you are also learning how to relate to them. This gives the four-legged critters and even the flying ones a little say in our development, I think. We don’t just teach them how to behave; sometimes they are the ones doing the teaching.

In Honor of Kitten Season: A Few Stories From a Shelter

03 Sunday Jun 2012

Posted by in Animals

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An Uninvited Guest

Maybe you haven’t heard of kitten season, but it is well into its early stages at this point. Early Spring and Summer see a sharp rise in the birth of puppies; they see an even sharper rise in the birth of kittens. June is the peak of kitten season.

Now you would think that something called ‘kitten season’ would be a very good thing. It must be the fluffiest, cutest, and most playful season of the year, right? And for most of us, it well could be. But if you work in a conventional Humane Association, kitten season can be hell. It must be bad enough for the average no-kill as they have to turn folks away, but for those who work in a will-kill animal shelter, this can be damned miserable.

First the marginal cases go. Animals with minor health or aggression issues (the kind that might have been overlooked with less competition for space) will go down as the kitten-count rises. Then come the clear-cut cases of healthy perfectly adoptable cats. Even the most beautiful adult cat just can’t compete next to a 6 week old bundle of ultra-cuteness. And if enough kittens come into a shelter, well then a portion of them to go down too, perfectly healthy kittens.

I worked in a conventional animal shelter for about a year and a half. We were lucky in that we put few healthy animals down in comparison to other open-intake facilities. As a PR guy, my role in handling the animals was rather limited. Still, I have quite a few vivid memories of the experience.

Today, I shall restrict myself to those stories dealing with cats.

OH SHIT! When I first took the job, I hadn’t even thought about the prospect of facing all those animals. I just needed the work. But then someone suggested that I go back and see the animals in person, and I strode off to check them out for myself. That’s when I realized I was in grave danger of becoming a pet-hoarding bearded cat-lady. I had a hard enough time walking by all the dogs. By the time I got to the cats, I knew I was in real trouble. Working at this shelter posed a hazard that I hadn’t even thought about when I first filled out that application.

There was no special emergency the first time I took a cat home. (I did it twice.) The little tabby just seduced me. She had the softest purr and a gentle voice to match it. I kept going back to pet that cat until I realized I would be pissed if someone else ended up with her. So, she went home with me one day.

Burp lives with my nephew and his wife now, and people still ask about her name. I tell them it was actually my Siamese that named her. I already had two cats and they were none-too pleased about the new edition to the family. The little tabby was still new in the house and trying her best to make friends with the older cats, but they were having none of it. I remember watching the tabby sit across a table from the two Siamese, giving off all the submissive signals she could, not the least of which being a very soft trilling meow which I thought to be among the cutest sounds in the known universe. Fido and Junkmail just glared at her. The whole scene reminded me of parents scolding a child who had burped loudly at the table. That’s when I realized, it wasn’t that she had burped. It was more like she was the burp, and she herself did not belong at the table, at least as far as Fido and Junkmail were concerned.

That’s how Burp got her name.

THE WORST MOMENT: It wasn’t often that I was asked to help put animals down, but it did happen. I remember a lady who brought in a very fat and rather old cat. It hadn’t been getting along with the other felines in her home, and apparently it wasn’t holding its own in the fights either. This big guy had huge bite marks on its back where some other kitty had gotten the best of him.

Whatever the cause of the conflict in its home, getting rid of this poor guy was the solution its human had decided upon. I had to help put him down. I remember the way he looked at me as I pulled him out of the cage and held him up. And I remember the tear that rolled down his face. I know I’m projecting a range of human emotions onto this, but I’ve never been able to escape the feeling that he knew exactly what was happening.

The Pride at its Peak

THE ALLERGIC VOLUNTEER: One of my favorite volunteers was a young woman who was terribly allergic to cats, but that didn’t stop her. She wasn’t all that interested in helping with the dogs; she just loved cats. So, this young lady would take allergy medication before coming to an adoption event. Then she would spend as much of her time as possible holding a cat in her lap. Oh she was happy to help out in every way needed, but what brought her to the events was the chance to hold a cat. She would do this until the medication began to wear off and her eyes started to get puffy. Then she would go home often feeling miserable because she had held the cat for too long.

At some point this volunteer fell in love with a pair of grey tabbies. They were well past 6 months and really a little too big for the same cage, but this particular pair were inseparable. Cats don’t always seem to care about sticking with a sibling, but these two did. We were actively trying to adopt them out as a pair, which is a little tricky, but it really seemed the right thing to do.

So, our allergic volunteer took to loving on these cats every chance she got. We were having a little trouble moving them out (at least as a pair), so she got to hold them a couple times as I recall. She wanted desperately to take them home, but of course that would have been a disaster. Luckily her boyfriend lived in a separate residence.

As far as I know, he still has them.

***

DAMMIT! DAMMIT! DAMMIT! We had a lady who brought kittens to us several times a year. She had been doing it for some time before I got there, and she was still doing it when I left. These were scrawny kittens, often suffering a range of minor illnesses, which was a huge problem because our shelter did not employ a vet. The woman never checked on her kittens after dropping them off; but she always left with a smile on her face, as though she was doing a good deed of some kind.

Various employees had tried suggesting that she spay and neuter her adult cats, but this woman said she didn’t have the money. We even called her attention to a program offering the service at a discount. When that didn’t work, a savvy volunteer offered to pay for the surgeries, as many as were needed, no questions asked. The woman still declined, albeit without much in the way of an explanation at this point. All excuses aside, she clearly wanted the litters.

The shelter workers weren’t allowed to discuss the fate of any particular animal brought in to the shelter. Our staff was of course quite clear about the range of possibilities, but no-one discussed what would happen to any particular critter, even if it was obvious to us where it was going. Everyone did what they were supposed to do with this woman, which is to say that we accepted her sick kittens without comment. When she asked if we would take care of them, we always said ‘yes’ and smiled back at her.

What we should have said is; “Lady, they’ll be dead before you reach the end of our driveway.”

Maybe THAT would have got her attention.

***

PEACE AND LOVE! A lady came in once asking for a good barn cat. She said she would take care of it, but she really needed one to handle the mice in her barn. We directed her to the biggest, toughest-looking cat in the shelter. She brought him back a few days later, explaining that she caught him sleeping in his bed beside a perfectly healthy mouse. Not to worry; we found a new home for ‘Hippy cat’, one that didn’t expect him to engage in acts of violence.

***

VERY SAD: A couple brought their daughter in for her birthday. She was probably around 7 or 8 and cute as a button. Her parents had been promising this little girl a kitten for weeks if not months, and today was the day she got to pick one out. They had even taken her to the pet store before coming out to the shelter. She had already purchased some toys along with all the necessities. They were all set!

She could not have come at a better time. Our cat room was full at this point, and most of its contents were kittens. So, she had plenty of cute little critters to choose from.

Of course the little girl wouldn’t be able to take her new kitten home directly. Her family could pick it up from the vet the next day. That’s how our shelter worked. This was an unpleasant surprise, but the girl took the news well. She and her parents were all smiles as they proceeded into the cat room to pick out their new family member.

It was close to an hour later that I went back to check on the family, and found the parents standing in the middle of the room. Both looked as if they wanted to crawl out of their own flesh. Sitting on the bench in front of them, I could see their little girl in tears as she held onto one of the little kittens. “I’m fine,” she cried repeatedly. Her puffy face, runny nose, and terribly bloodshot eyes told a different story.

***

OF ASSHOLES AND ANGELS: It was a couple days before a big adoption event, and the shelter staff were pleased with the selection of dogs and cats we would have for this one. The shelter was nearly full, but not overfull. In fact, it was just about perfect.

…which is to say that we were ripe for a disaster.

Without warning, animal control officers for the county brought us 12 feral cats they had trapped in a remote lot somewhere. By contract, we had to take these cats, and by contract we had to hold them in quarantine for 3 days after which they would certainly be put down. With a full shelter, this had a very ironic effect, and by ‘ironic’ I mean ‘fucking perverse’. It meant that we would have to put healthy adoptable cats down to make room for the new feral cats.

Asked if the county could give us a little more warning in the future, the officer suggested we were trying to get out of our responsibilities. So, there we were, suddenly overflowing with cats, and facing a series of ugly decisions.

I took one cat home that day and a foster-care facility took 2 more off our hands. Lacking any other resources, I called the manager of a local pet store. We had an arrangement with this store, which included (among other things) housing up to 6 of our cats overnight. We could have as many as we wanted over there during the day, but only 6 could be left overnight. All these cats could be adopted directly out of the store, and it was at least possible they had moved one out that day, at least that’s what we were hoping at the shelter. So, I called to see if there were any openings.

The conversation went something like this:

Me: “Are you full?”

Pet Store Manager: “What happens if I say ‘yes’?”

Awkward silence.

Me: “I officially cannot tell you what happens if you say ‘yes’.”

More awkward silence.

Pet Store Manager: “Bring over as many as you need to.”

I could have kissed her right through the phone.

***

SADDER STILL: One Friday, we found a black&white tux in terrible shape. It would take a vet to establish the full extent of his injuries, but anyone with eyes could see that its jaw was broken, …actually shattered was more like it. Watching this poor creature trying to drink from the bowl of water we gave it was a truly heartbreaking experience.

Earlier that week, we had received a call from someone about a cat matching this one’s description. There had even been some suggestion it might have fallen off a second floor balcony. So, the staff made several calls to the probable owner. As the close of business approached, someone finally got through. Lacking a car and living across town, the owner asked if she could come in the following Monday. I drove out to get her instead.

I really wasn’t sure what to tell her about the situation. A couple of us had been on the verge of tears over the matter ourselves, and I couldn’t imagine what it would have been like to see your own pet that way, but of course none of us were entirely sure if this was her cat.

It was.

***

A FERAL KITTEN: While cleaning the cat cages one morning, I saw a beautiful little tortoise-shell kitten in our quarantine room. She was huddled behind her litter box, growling at me. The card on the front of her cage read; ‘caution’. Of course a tiny kitten may not seem like much of a threat, but they can draw blood at an early age.

Eyes Just Turning
(and still prone to run-away)

Which is part of what makes the process of turning a feral kitten so wonderful. That first time you reach out to grab it, you just don’t know how much of a mistake you could be making. A feral kitten will hiss at you. It will puff itself up to sizes you couldn’t imagine from its happy state. It will spit; it will growl; and it will do its damnedest to convince you to leave it alone. But if it lets you grab it, just once, well then you have it. All you have to do at that point is pet the little bundle of anger and keep on doing that until it learns to like it. Repeat as necessary.

(I distinctly recall a feral kitten growling at me furiously as it rolled over on its back so I could scratch its belly.)

This particular kitten didn’t bite me, and I worked on her a lot for the next three days. It turns out, she had been found in the engine block of a rather modern vehicle. Some couple driving through town had heard her cries just before turning the ignition. One of our kennel-techs and an animal control officer had spent an hour trying to get the little kitten to come out far enough that they could reach her. Instead, she ran out and got into yet another vehicle. This time they managed to nab her and brought her in for the obligatory 3-days of quarantine.

So, I had 3 days to tame the little girl. She had to learn to like being handled or she would go straight down on day 3. Others may have helped too; I really don’t know.

By the time the little kitten’s quarantine ran out someone had crossed out the word ‘caution’ on the her information card, and someone else had written ‘friendly kitty’ in its place. (Okay, it might have been me that crossed out the word ‘caution’, but I’m pretty sure someone else wrote the part about her being friendly.) This meant she could go in the regular cat room and take her chances with folks looking to adopt a cat. The trouble was we were awfully full that day, healthy cats were in danger, and I was just a little worried that my favorite kitten might be cranky enough to scratch someone. Bad for the customer and the shelter; worse for the kitten.

What?

So, I took the little bugger home just to be sure. When she was big enough to go to the vet, I brought her back in and filled out the adoption paperwork. Asked what her name was, I hesitated. That’s when my colleague told me the story of the vehicle and pointed out the name on her original card; it read ‘Auto’.

Auto-Kitty is still with me today.