THE LITTLE BOY WHO ASKED TO BE RESCUED

In October 2009, a cat I was hoping to entice to come in from the back yard went missing. After not being able to find her for a week, I checked at our local shelter. She wasn’t there, but while I was in the “cat room” looking in the cages, I suddenly felt a pair of paws take hold of my hand. I looked down and there was a black kitten in the lower cage, who had reached out and grabbed my hand.

The shelter worker who was there with me explained “that’s Danny - he’s been here four months. There have been four adoptions that fell through for him.”

I knelt down and looked at him. He was black, with long thick fur, and he meowed at me plaintively. I checked the tag on the cage door. He was seven months old and had been in the shelter since he was three months old, a “surrender.”

He seemed nice, but I really wasn’t looking to take on a new kitten. I left.

But all that weekend, I kept thinking about him. I looked him up on the shelter’s website. They had him listed as an American shorthair, which was obviously incorrect. I kept thinking about him.

That Monday, I went back to the shelter and inquired about adopting him. I was told he couldn’t be adopted until after Halloween, because they were concerned about people taking black cats then.

I came back two days later to visit him. He was very affectionate when he was released from the cage and handed to me. The shelter worker asked me if I was definite that I wanted to adopt him. I told her I was. She told me she was going to the office and left. She returned a few minutes later and told me they really wanted to see him adopted, that everyone had been very upset when the previous potential adoption candidates had backed out. If I was serious about doing it, they’d let him go now. I hadn’t planned for this and told them I had to go home and get a cat carrier.

When I returned, they had him ready. I filled out the paperwork and paid the $50 adoption fee. This was actually the first time I had ransomed an animal out of a shelter.

He made no fuss about going in the cat carrier and was quiet the whole trip, unlike other cats I have known who hated traveling in cars.

At home, I took him into the writing office and let him out of the carrier. He walked around, sniffed things, then jumped in the easy chair and I sat with him while we got to know each other better. It was obvious he knew he had found his “forever home.”

When the other cats came to check the source of the new animal smell, he was inquisitive with them and there weren’t any problems with anyone.

Over the next week, he rapidly got to know the house, made the acquaintance of all the other cats, and all seemed well.

Then I took him to the vet for a checkup. I turned out he had worms, which we took care of, and the vet told me he had a heart murmur. He wasn’t sure what the problem was but he thought there was something going on. He suggested I think about returning Danny to the shelter, but I declared that he’d already had his hopes dashed, and that I would stick with him.

Over the ten years Danny lived with us, he did have medical problems, the continuing kind for which there isn’t a cure but there is a treatment.

He never quite completely socialized. That was because the most important months of his life - those four months when a young cat learns how to get along with his world, had been spent in solitary confinement. He’d been deprived.

But he always had a good heart. He was a quiet boy who would come in the office and sit with me, waiting to be invited to jump in my lap. When I put a cat tree near the writing desk, he became a regular resident.

In October 2020, eleven years after he’d been adopted, Danny got sick, again. Unfortunately, it was right in the middle of the pandemic, when getting an appointment at the vet was hard to do, there was no walking in. It took ten days to get an appointment, after trying other vets without success.

The night before his appointment, he curled up in my lap and stayed with me all evening while we watched TV.

The next morning, when I went to get him to take him to the vet, I couldn’t find him and he didn’t answer. After searching everywhere, I finally lifted the front edge of the couch and looked underneath.

He had passed sometime in the night. I think he stayed with me the night before as he did because he knew his time was now. I’m glad I had those hours of closeness with him as we did.

Friends have told me I gave him the best life he could have asked for. But every time I think of him, which is often, I wish I could have found an appointment earlier. I don’t think he had to die when he did.

I consider Danny one of the victims of the pandemic.

You can support That’s Another Fine Mess by becoming a paid subscriber for only $7/month or $70/year, saving $14.

Comments are for paid subscribers.