FOUND: One scrawny, starved, throwaway black kitten, about four weeks old, down in one of my sheep fields about 20 feet from the road. Blinded by eyes glued shut with pus, caked with terror-loosened feces, it couldn't do anything but scream, which led me to it.
I followed its cries to find it struggling in circles in the tall dry grass, too small for me to see until I was upon it, but big enough to be a target for a hawk. Not much bigger than a mouse, really; nothing but skin and bone and black fur that looked as though it had already been chewed on by something, it was anything but appealing, and too young to survive on its own.
Why did you do it? Couldn't you wait until it was big enough to be claimed in front of the grocery or feed store?
I've had a lot of throwaways appear on my corner in the eight summers we've lived here, and most of them didn't make it for one reason or another. This one might; it is in a box in my kitchen, bathed, eyes anointed, fed milk through an eye dropper. I couldn't just leave it there for the hawks.
But maybe that's what you were counting on, you who threw it out of your car or truck, that someone would find it who had the heart you lack.
Oh well, a farm can't have too many cats. (Perhaps you thought.) I'll put it in the barn when it is big enough to eat with my barn cats, and it will have to get along. If anybody wants to give it a better life, please call XXX-XXXX.
Rebecca Just Wagner, 1996
Postscript: I ran this ad in the local newspaper. It generated a lot of calls, and the kitten was placed in a loving home. The end. ;-)
Sunday, February 21, 2010
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