Good deed for the day
I heard the meowing through the heating ducts. This puzzled me quite a bit since I’m allergic to cats and we have never owned one. Then I realized that the meowing was merely resonating in the heating duct and was in fact coming from outside. The vocal cat in question must be underneath our back deck, up against the wall of our house. I could tell because I was in the unfinished basement storage room. This was the point where I went rushing upstairs and threw on my coat because I’ve been hearing the same meowing sounds off and on for over a week. When I’d heard it before, I’d been standing on the deck in question, but unable to locate the noise. The poor cat was stuck under our deck for at least a week. I suspect that the crack it had wiggled through then froze over, trapping the poor animal. I had to pour hot water over the hose hatch to get it to unfreeze enough to let the cat out. I’ve never seen such a grateful and friendly animal. She is skin and bones. She must have gotten adequate water from the melting snow, but she was starving. I fed her tuna for starters because it was the only thing I had, but we switched to dry cat food as soon as I could acquire some from a neighbor. The cat was as hungry for touch as she was for food. She kept walking away from the bowl to be petted and if I walked away, she followed me. (I’m not actually sure the animal is female, it could be a neutered male.)
Unfortunately my allergies quickly started acting up, so we transferred the cat, the bowl of food, and an old towel to our sunny front porch. Kiki has been out there with the cat for over an hour. The cat is completely uninterested in leaving the porch and is very interested in coming back into the house. This animal has obviously been someone’s pet, but either got lost or abandoned. This same cat came begging to our back door several times last fall, so she has been on her own for awhile. Now the kids are all hoping that we get to keep the cat. I’m holding the “we need to ask around for the owner” line, but I honestly don’t hold out much hope for finding the owner. We may have acquired a cat. Not something I had on my list to do today, but I couldn’t leave the poor thing trapped. Then having rescued it, I could not fail to feed it.
This picture does not show how skinny this poor cat is. When you pet her you can feel every rib and every vertebra.
