cats

(Cross-posted on The Angry Man­drel lam­p­work­ing board)

We had to pick up cat food and lit­ter this after­noon, so we stopped at Pets­Mart. The res­cue soci­eties were out in full force — so many adorable dogs and cats, pup­pies and kittens…each with a story more heartwrench­ing than the one before. The boxer mix whose fam­ily wouldn’t give him the atten­tion he needed; the chi­huahua mix who was tied to a tree in the yard and kept break­ing loose and run­ning away; the Yorkies that had been abused by their pre­vi­ous owner; the teenaged mama cat and her kit­tens that had been aban­doned — and many, many more. I started cry­ing when we got back in the car.

In the past week at the shel­ter where I vol­un­teer, we had a “door dump” aban­doned because her owner could no longer care for her, a cat adopted almost four years ago returned because her own­ers “no longer had room for her,” and worst of all, three babies, barely three weeks old, that had been found in the wall of a house being demol­ished. The young woman who found them had taken them home, but her par­ents would have noth­ing to do with it — the mother very vehe­mently told our shel­ter man­ager that if she wouldn’t take them they would just be dumped off at the Wal-Mart up the road. So they are now in the care of one of our vol­un­teer fos­ter par­ents, one of my fel­low clean & feed shift mem­bers who was sup­posed to be tak­ing a break from fos­ter­ing because of recent illness/death in the fam­ily. Now she has these three kit­tens, who must be syringe-fed every few hours.

I feel so angry and frus­trated and help­less to do enough. All these ani­mals want is food and water and shel­ter and some­one to love, and to love them back. I would not have sur­vived the last decade with­out my IrisKitty and Sarah­Cat. It is so totally beyond my com­pre­hen­sion that peo­ple can be so hurt­ful and cruel, espe­cially to those who look to us for care and com­pan­ion­ship, and give so much back in return.

I am not a reli­gious per­son but I pray there is a spe­cial hell for those who abuse ani­mals and children.