Youth in Asia

This post was originally written back in March. I just found it in my drafts folder, and I don't know why it never made it to the blog (probably because I NEVER STOP TALKING), but I thought it was worth putting up. (and NO, I'm not out of posts, do I EVER run out of posts? I just thought this one was interesting. So there.)



So, anyway, last Saturday (Ed: Three months ago) I drove out to East Jeezus, where I ended up adopting two cats, and how the hell did THAT happen, anyway?

And the house where I went, it belonged to the woman who was rescuing all of the trailer cats. She volunteers for a small rescue group, which suddenly found itself completely overwhelmed when a call to come and get "a couple of pregnant cats" turned out instead to be, at last count, fifteen cats of varying ages and feralosity, with another five or so still to be caught.

And oh, what a story I got! About how the woman who owned the cats was living in the unheated trailer along with them. About how the dining room alone had about three inches of cat shit on the floor. About how, when the rescue worker was talking with the woman, one of the woman's dogs lifted up a leg and nonchalantly PEED on a basket full of laundry, and the woman said nothing. About how at one point the cops were called ...

But ANYWAY. So I go to the rescue lady's house, and of course the first thing that hits you when you walk in the door is eau de dirty litterbox. Maaannnn, that is one smell I do not like. But when you suddenly find yourself caring for a bunch of random cats, I guess it's kind of unavoidable. The healthy cats were upstairs in the living room, and the cats with respiratory viruses were down in the basement. The unfinished, gloomy basement. In cages. And I swear, for a minute I wondered if they wouldn't have been better off back in the trailer. But the rescue woman explained that they would be brought upstairs as they recovered; she couldn't risk infecting the entire group with respiratory disease. It was just ... sad.

Also sad? The rescue woman was sad. Because, as it turns out, that very morning, she had to make an emergency trip to the vet. To have her pet mouse euthanized. The mouse had been very sick, you see, and the day before it had taken a turn for the worse, and she couldn't just let it suffer ...

I ... I ... I kept a straight face. Here she was, in a house full of feral CATS, and she took a MOUSE to the vet to have it euthanized?

hahahahahahahaha oh she's a better woman than I am, that's for sure.