To begin with, we are a no-pet household.  I’m allergic to cats.  The two of us are doing well just taking care of each other, and staying in our own home.  However, since we grew up on or near a farm, both of us love animals.  Which posed a real crisis when a stray cat suddenly appeared on our property.  And didn’t want to leave.   Soon we were issuing an alert:  Help! There’s a cat hanging  out on our doorstep.

The cat was full grown and appeared to be well fed.  That first day, it simply napped in the sunlight on our doorstep.  Not the front door, but the side door leading to our  warm, wood deck. We thought at first it belonged to our neighbor. But when it stood on its back legs and meowed at the window, we saw it lacked a white tummy, and was a stranger. It was gone by the next morning, much to our relief.  But that night, it came back and watched us eat dinner at the dining room table. By now it was hungry. Clawing at the window and crying to be fed. We lost our appetite, turned out the lights, and went upstairs to watch the news.

The next morning, the cat was still there, hungrier than ever.    And now we faced a dilemma.  Should we feed the cat or call the humane society?   We opted for the latter, but were told the shelter was full and there was no more room for cats.  Our only recourse was to call the  Animal Control arm of the police department.  This was a Saturday, and we would have to wait until they opened on Monday.

Needing help for our decision, we called our son who owns two cats, and asked his advice. He rushed over and took a picture of the cat with his iphone.  Next, he vetoed the call to Animal Control.  “They’ll just kill it,” he said. Therefore, he volunteered to either take the cat to another city or find it a new owner.  This was around 3 o’clock in the afternoon.

Cat lovers apparently have a network at his workplace.  He issued a call for feline rescue, and within minutes, one of his co workers said she wanted the cat, but we would have to wait until she got off work at 4.  Tensely, we counted the minutes until she arrived.  Would she change her mind?  Would the cat attack her?  Finally, a pretty young girl arrived.  When she stepped onto the deck, the cat jumped into her arms.  She carried it  to her car, wrapped it in her coat, and drove away.  Mission accomplished in a little over an hour.

Was it simply a stray cat, or had some irresponsible human  purposely dumped it  onto our property? That’s one thing we’ll never know.  But we are grateful to a couple of  Feline Rescue’s first responders.