A story without conclusion about a black cat
Sunday, September 15, 2002 - 14:52

Friday night Mr. Pooh and I were walking up the sidewalk to our apartment when a black cat came trotting by. Other people were out and about and tried to attract the cat's attention, but the cat seemed intent on going somewhere. It looked lost and scared.

We walked on a bit.

Then my conscience started acting up. What if it had been Miss Kitty were wandering around lost and scared? Wouldn't I want someone to try to catch her? The black cat had been headed straight for the busy road by our apartment complex and would probably soon be squashed.

So we backtracked and went around a building to where we thought the cat was headed. We eventually found the cat and sort of cornered it.

Mr. Pooh picked the cat up and it immediately turned on its very loud purr motor. Miss Kitty rarely purrs, and when she does, it's not very loud. I think she's not firing on all cylinders or something. Anyway, this cat's purr motor was top of the line, like a V8 or maybe a V12. (Miss Kitty's is probably a 4 banger or a 2 banger.)

We took the cat home and looked at the message in the container on its collar. The message said, "Put me down I can walk home from here (I hate riding in cars)" and it had 2 phone numbers. From the numbers we could tell that the cat didn't live in our apartment complex. We called both numbers, but the people weren't home.

So we figured the cat belonged to the yuppie new housing development that was built next to our apartment complex, so we brought it there. The cat followed us as we walked through the maze of streets (with cute names like Silkberry Lane and Meadowdew Court and Formerwetlands Avenue [yeah, I made that last one up]) but never acted like he belonged anywhere. Eventually, he stopped following us.

I was very mad at the cat's irresponsible owners. They could have at least had their address in the collar so that we would have known where the cat lived. Maybe he was just out on his nightly prowl, or maybe he was really lost. We didn't know. We took him to an area where he wasn't near any busy streets, but there were other hazards, like raccoons and antifreeze and large storm drains.

The end.