For some reason I kinda remember telling this story, but I guess not.I was out walking my dog yesterday and saw a trap that had a cat in it. The animal control people set them up (it's like traffic tickets, a false pretense to generate revenue). I inquired at the property management office about it. They said they knew and called the people who put the trap out. Supposedly someone was gonna come out, but it was already close to 5pm. I suspected they would blow it off and 1.5 hours later I was certain of it. I thought to myself that the cat was screwed. I am more of a dog person but I hate to see any animal suffer.
It was supposed to be a very cold night (it did go down to the 20's) and I feared the cat would either suffer greatly or even die. On the other hand, if I even touched the cage it would be a crime as it is government property. And this is the conservative south, so make no mistake that I would definitely have been arrested had I been caught messing with the cage.
But there was no moral delimma going on in my head, I knew I was going to let the cat out, pure and simple (you gotta be who you are, you know?).
So I grab a pair of work gloves and a flashlight and go to the cage. It gets dark early plus I didn't want to get scratched if the cat got spooked. In retrospect, it was a good idea but because the cage was so difficult to work with.
I get there and the cat gets mildly spooked and just goes to the opposite end of the cage. I start working with the cage and quickly realize it was designed by some seriously sadistic son of a bitch. There were 3 different catches to it, but I only have two hands, so I had to let go of 1 to get the other 2 and 1 would always recatch. So, I figured since I was breaking the law already that if I was in for a penny, I was in for a pound and with great effort broke one of the latches. Either there is a tool used to open the cage or I am stupid. No matter, the brute force method worked (thank god for those bowls of wheaties!!).
Since I had to get physical with the cage I had to shove it around a bit. This spooked the cat and I look down to see it hissing at me, lol. I just waited a sec and talked to the cat in a gentle voice and it calmed right down. I finally got the door open and held it up making sure I was well to the side. The cat was just looking at me not sure what to do. So in that gentle voice told him to go and tapped the cage a few times and out he went. He ran to the woods, stopped at the line to look at me, and then darted off.
I then made sure that the cage would not trap another animal before fleeing from the crime scene.
Then I hear from a neighbor that during the early morning someone else saw the cat and called the police. A cop came out, saw the cat, and then just left. So I now figure that the cat would have been in that cage no less then 24 hours and most likely would have frozen to death. So I guess risking arrest was worth it.
Anyway, thats my story...not worthy of a medal I guess, but it was still pretty cool.
T
