Meow

Once again, the Bartle family has narrowly escaped pet ownership.

One morning this week, a scrawny black cat was mewing on the back step during breakfast.  It was a pathetic little thing, and I was sure it was hungry.  So, charitable animal lover that I am (not), I closed the curtain until it went away.

The cat disappeared for a while, but it was back in the afternoon.  The boys saw it run under the house while they were playing in the yard.  Now this concerned me.  The cat was under the house?  What if it decided to live there?  What if it had babies under there?  What if it broke into my house at night and clawed me in my sleep?

Clearly, the cat had to go.

While I [panicked and] developed a strategy, the cat slept under our house and tried to get our attention at the beginning and end of each day.  Presumably, it left during daylight hours to hunt or scrounge or scavenge some food because a certainly mean lady wouldn't offer any easy sustenance on the porch.  On Tuesday night the cat whined all.night.long (and I know, because a certain baby did the same thing).  So on Wednesday Garry said he would summon Animal Control to pick it up.

That's when we discovered that Animal Control doesn't pick up stray cats.  Apparently feral felines don't endanger the public enough.  Animal Control does, however, run a shelter that accepts stray cats that people deliver, so we borrowed an animal carrier and planned to trap our yard's newest resident.  On Wednesday night, Garry stepped onto the back porch and noticed the cat staring at him.  Amazingly, the cat didn't bolt, so Garry quickly unlocked the animal carrier, picked up the cat, and put it inside.  In a matter of seconds the deed was done.

I was in the bedroom at the time, unaware of what was transpiring on the back porch.  I just heard a very loud and angry cat and jumped out of bed to investigate.  I was thrilled to find the cat in the cage, and also relieved that it hadn't scratched or bitten Garry.  Garry fed it some chicken, which stopped the crazy-loud mewing, and we all went to bed for the night.

The next morning, Garry (and Lexi) delivered the cat to the animal shelter.  I had to laugh when I saw Garry's Facebook post and the related comments.  Garry's last comment cracks me up.

Garry: Just dropped off the cat at the animal shelter.  Smelliest building I can ever remember going into.  Glad I don't work there!

Angie: Hilarious.

Luhi: I can imagine.

Rebecca: I have a hard enough time going into a Petco so I can't imagine an animal shelter.

Betsy: Oh, come on.  I'm sure Ecuador [where Garry served his two-year LDS mission] provided much smellier buildings. 

Garry: Betsy, while you may or may not be correct, if you are, time has dulled my memory enough to make me question your assertion.  I guess "smelliest" is very subjective (who doesn't love the aroma of a good bakery?), but the degree to which my nose found the combination of smells in the shelter to be offensive was one that I can say definitely stands out!  I'm sure this was exacerbated by my expectation of something better given the office location (downtown Colorado Springs) and the fact that I'm pretty sure this isn't a third-world country!

This is a post that really deserves pictures, but alas, we don't have any.  However, I am grateful that the computer doesn't have a scratch-n-sniff function.  Some things are best left to the imagination.