thankful

There's a lot to be thankful for this week. My cat even should be thankful. What he should be thankful for is to not have an owner who is as irresponsible and rotten as my neighbors. My neighbors have a kitten. He is very small and happens to be one of those cats who loves people. He just can't get enough of people. All he wants to do is sit in your house and enjoy company. He is in fact not very demanding, simply the presence of people seems to be all he desires. However, my neighbors have determined that cats can live outdoors, as is evidenced by the large number of apparent strays living outdoors around our apartments. Therefore, they reason, a 7 month old unneutered unvaccinated loving companion seeking cat who is neither feral nor totally a stray can live outdoors.

Why would you want to do this? Aside from just being a fucking moron, it seems there are some reasons for their choice to inflict outdoors only restrictions on this cat. The reasons are "my roommate is allergic" and "my boyfriend doesn't like cats". This was said by the very young woman who owns this cat. I think she does care for the cat. The problem is, she has two men telling her what to do. And the bigger problem is she believes them.

Rather than see her kitten end up a smear on our driveway the other night, my sister decided he should be moved indoors briefly while she moved her car (don't want to park in the wrong spot, we have assigned parking). So she brought him in briefly. This turned into him following a neighbor's visitor in the next day and getting stuck in our hall. Which then turned into him staying in the hall for most of the day, then working his way into my kitchen. My cat watched in horror from behind the french door to the rest of the house. "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?" he seemed to be slapping out with his swishing tail while all this kitten attention took place.

Now I was not overly happy to have this kitten in here. I really wasn't. Cute aside, I already caught something from a cat with even less contact but in a similar situation. Years ago, I had just moved into my (then) new apartment with Tom. One of my neighbors, Terry, had many children and pets and just kept getting more. She was wretched. She treated her children and her pets horribly. I never knew which I was going to find standing outside my kitchen window, crying in my garden. Seriously, it was either Tima or one of the never ending supplies of kittens Terry's cats seemed to produce. When I moved in, I witnessed Tima, her sister, and a couple of other stray kids dunking one of Terry's cats in the kiddie pool. Poor Shadow. That cat put up with a lot. I stopped the kids and then sat with them towelling Shadow off. It turns out Shadow had ticks and I got one. Then I got Lyme disease and I've not been well since.

So while I adore cats, I am reluctant to get too cosy with outdoors ones, even if they are cute skinny kittens who are left outside on a cold soaking rainfilled day. I did feel that it was ok to have him in the hall though. This turned into my patting him, feeding him, and playing with him because I am a softy and he was so cute and sweet. He gave me a small scratch, I can't remember if it was when we were playing with him or when I was trying to see if I could get him to go back out (this was early on when I was still hoping my neighbors were home and hadn't gone to check out his outdoor "bed" the girl had set up for him at her boyfriend's direction).

As it became clear they were not coming home that night, we decided to set the kitten up in the hall with a bed, food, and a litter box. It was better than the outdoor box the neighbor had set up for him and there was food.

Today I went over to talk to her about the kitten. I was hoping to either convince her to bring him in a little more or to let someone adopt him. She wasn't having any of it. In the meantime, I noticed kitten had started drooling. I had thought he felt warm, possibly feverish. No, I'm seroius. One of my other neighbors even commented on it (kitten had made his way into her house too earlier in the day). So by the time the girl and her man came over to collect the kitten from my hallway, the kitten had full on drool and was indeed rather warm.

Fuck. "Um...did you ever get his shots?" I asked twisting my feet into a knot which is what I do when I am nervous or holding in a violent impulse. "No...we didn't have time. And I was waiting to get a job to take him to the vet," she said to the floor and not to me. Her boyfriend had researched outdoor accommodations for cats, he told me this. But in this internet frenzy of research to justify neglecting the cat, they hadn't bothered to look into the low cost spay/neuter/vaccination programs in the area. Which are ample.

That there's the final straw. Not only do I now have to know this MORON, this supreme idiot, this selfish rotten child of a woman who lets men trample not just on her but on the things she loves without regard for the fact that some of those things are living feeling creatures (yeah mommie issues), this door mat is letting her kitten stay outside and doesn't want him in because she's afraid he'll get "spoiled" and want to be indoors all the time - not only do I have to know she is over there abusively neglecting her cat, but now I have to wonder do I have fucking rabies.

Mother fuckity fuckola. There's precious little I can do at the moment. I don't want to call animal control and have the kitten killed and tested. He wasn't acting odd, just drooling and feverish. I'm really hoping it's that he's losing his kitten teeth. His breath was foul and I guess they can get fevers when they are losing their teeth. I'm still calling my doctor on Monday but I'm also going to be a royal pain in this girl's ass until she takes the kitten to the vet. She said she'd try to take him tomorrow (I guess the drooling alarmed even her although I give it 1/2 hour after she and the man left before he was able to talk her out of it). She's going to wish she never learned the word "CAT" if she doesn't get him to a vet ASAP. No, not threats of retribution. Just me, at her door, several times a day every day until she at least gets the kitten checked out. You might be thinking "wow she's a total hypochondriac". I might too if I hadn't caught Lyme in such a similar way just a few years back. Since I did though, I prefer to think of it as anxiety that has a basis in a seriously shitty experience. If I have some proof kitten saw the vet and the vet said it's all good, that'll be enough for me. Until then, I'll be a little bit twitchy (although hopefully not in the literal sense).

My cat should be thankful I kept him the hell out of the kitchen, away from the kitten, and that I washed my hands every time I patted it and changed my clothes at least every other time. He should also be thankful I'm not a total idiot like this chick. And I am thankful that although I have done some supremely, spectacularly stupid shit for the men in my life from time to time, I don't think I've ever sunk that low.

I am not thankful that I now need to call my doctor on Monday and tell her I got scratched by a drooling febrile unvaccinated kitten in a state where rabies is like the fucking catch of the day. More joys of living in the middle of buttfuck nowhere rural New England. In case you can't tell, thankful or not, I am in a bit of a rotten mood about this. Mostly, I think, because I am in shock that someone as just, well, ungodly irrationally stupid as her continues to exist. We can only hope her stupidity facilitates her rapidly removing herself from the gene pool before she spawns. I plead guilty to some dumbass thinking for letting myself get cozy with the kitten, but for fuck's sake, it was a cold wet skinny little kitten howling to come inside from the rain. At least my stupidity had some heart in it.