Cruelty to animals?
We rescued an otherwise doomed kitty Saturday night. We were on our way home at about 6:00, driving down a pretty busy road. I saw a cat walking down the middle of one of the side roads that meets up with the street we were on. She was walking very slowly and kind of crouching, as if she were stalking something. She was about to walk into traffic, seemingly oblivious of the cars racing by.
We turned at the next street and went around the block, and by the time we got back to the intersection, two other good samaritans had also stopped. They apparently saw someone else hit the cat, look back to see what happened, then quickly drive away. The cat wasn’t crushed anywhere, so the car must not have rolled over any part of the cat, it must have just bumped against it somehow. Neither of these people wanted to take any more responsibility for the cat, so we took it home. One of them had just come from the grocery store, and gave us a couple small packets of wet cat food they had just bought for their own cat.
We did everything we could for the cat, and she did eat a bit of the food. She stayed in our bedroom overnight, away from our other two cats. She was very lethargic, and seemed to have almost no strength. We would bend down to pick her up, and she would almost fall over as we gently upset her balance when we lifted her.
While watching her slowly stumble around the room, almost bumping into everything in her path, we realized that the cat was blind. She walked slowly enough that she wouldn’t hurt herself if she did walk into something, but she was able to avoid things by sensing them with her whiskers. Her eyes were cloudy, and she would not track objects that were moved in front of her, nor blink when something was rapidly moved close to her face. She wasn’t deaf, as she would respond to snapped fingers near her head.
She had no collar, but she didn’t look like a stray cat that lived on the street. She could barely walk, let alone fend for herself. There are no houses or apartments for several blocks in all directions where we found her. We can only conclude that someone abandoned her in the area.
She was in worse shape Sunday. Kathy, Lexi and I drove her to an animal hospital in Beaverton. By the time we got there, she was almost completely unresponsive, and Kathy thought she had died in her arms a few times. They took the cat in, and said they would take care of it. They said it looked like the cat was very old, and that she was even starting to lose some of her teeth.
I don’t understand how someone could just abandon their pet like this.
Update 3/7/05: Read about another lost pet adventure with a happier ending here.
1 comment February 14th, 2005