Friday, July 04, 2003
Zombie Cats and Corpsified Dogs
I spent about an hour this evening in some sort of pet shop for the damned, cradlinga starving, one-eyed cat while a dog with one eye hidden behind some sort of disgusting growth on his nose looked on.
Kristin and I spotted the cat on an evening stroll, just around the corner from the house. He was limping, dragging his back left paw. His fur was course and matted, and did little to cover the bones protruding from evry angle, only barely constrained by his tight skin. His right eye was missing, leaving an uncomfortable pink spot on one side of his black and white face.
It took us a moment to realize it was a cat, if sat so still as we approached. We thought as first he was leeping, but our incessant tick-tick-ticking brought this feline golem to life, meowing plaintively and shuffling toward us. Concerned, I went back home and braved the bureacracy of calling a government office after hours. Eventually I was led to non-emergency dispatch, who sent first a police officer and then animal control.
Trusting my instincts over better judgment, I picked up the kitty and brought him to our house. Despite his injuries and trauma, he was a love-kitty; purring happily, he relaxed in my srms, kneading with his paws and rubbing against by arms (and leaving smeary goo lines that I tried fervently not to imagine from whence they came as his Cyclops head moved back and forth). We tried to get him to drink some water and eat some food, which he meowed for and pawed for but did not eat. All thew while, we were shadowed by one of our neighbors gog, a kind of threadbare ragamuffin with a what looks to be an enormous pimple along the ridge of his nose. :Like the dog who was struck last week, this little mutt often stands in the road and refuses to move, or follows lackadaisically behind moving cars. The dog kept trying to get into the cat's food, who would attack it (the only sign of aggression it would show). After the dog retreated, the cat would resume its endless calling and figure eights among my legs, attempting to be cradled again.
Finally, animal control showed up, and the technician made gross assumptions about the cat: he's not neutered, so probably a stray (how come he's so affectionate then?); he's an old cat, the skinniness is probably due to kidney failure (the cat appeared young to Kristin and I). She did discover the cat is not missing its eye, but that it somehow (eww) got pushed back into the cavity. To my surprise, the technician did not seem interested in talking to the people I thought might be the owners (I found the cat in their drive way), nor talking to the owners of the stray dog, despite the fact that both she and the officer affirmed our suspicions that there is in fact a leash law for Alachua County, a fact that has eluded most of our town's residents (remind me some time to tell you how packs of dogs routinely move along our two heavily congested state roads). Unbelievably, I also discovered that strays are only kept for three business days after capture before being put to sleep; I had always thought this was seven days.
So I feel glad that I helped the cat out but also concerned for its immediate future and possible demise. On Monday I do plan to follow up and see what the cat's condition is, and ask around at work if anyone has room for a cat. Of course, in doing so, I might be sacrificing an adoptive home for Lockheed if she pees on something again, or for one of the feral kittens our office staff has been eyeing, but this cat was far too friendly to forget.
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