Bonus Kitty

This homeless waif accosted us while we were unloading groceries a couple of weeks ago, rubbing our legs and mewing incessantly. Since there're coyotes in the neighborhood (I had seen two crossing the street earlier that evening) we took the creature in and placed her on the sun porch, segregated from "our" cats. We posted flyers all about advertising "FOUND CAT" knowing in our hearts that a creature this sweet and friendly had to be missed by her owners. (Anyone who read my eulogy to Lil Dog knows where this is headed.)

No response after the fliers and Craig's List postings and we spent another week in denial ("but we don't want another cat") even as we paid a vet $125 for Feline Leukemia/AIDS tests, as well as getting vaccinations and testing for parasites. After all, the poor thing couldn't stay on the sun porch forever, and we had to give her a clean bill of health before she interacted with our other cats. Of course, we told ourselves that if we adopted her out, (by now we'd given up on her old owner showing up to claim her) her new owner would reimburse us for the vet bill.

Then a friend of my wife sees the flyer and gives us a call. She knew where the little vagabond lived. So we could finally take her to her rightful owner, right. Ah, sort of.

It seems that the old woman with a horse stable two houses down from us had kept this little creature as a barn cat. Two months ago, this old woman passed away, the trainers came and took the horses, and this poor thing was left to its own devices. So, now we have a new cat.