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Net friends silent over fate of a hungry, homeless cat
By Wang Yong |
August 18, 2009, Tuesday
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A little stray cat caught my eye last Thursday on my way to work. It was trembling from hunger and cold.
I stopped and stooped to "talk" to it in the shabby - filthy indeed - lane in which I found it. It opened its mouth as if to "meow," but it was so weak that no voice came out. I saw its eagerness to be fed and caressed.
I had no food with me. I could not bring it to work. "What can I do for you, meow?" I asked it, or rather myself. The cat lowered its puckered eyelids, giving the damp ground a blind stare as I stood up to leave. Its hope that my arrival would change its fate was fading away. We were destined to be strangers, I said to myself.
On Saturday, again on my way to work, I came to see the cat in the same dilapidated lane, this time with cat food in my hand. No sooner had I sprinkled the Whiskas food on the ground than the cat devoured it. I took pictures and uploaded them in my blog. Then came my nightmare.
While many of my net friends showed great sympathy to the cat and their sense of helplessness about its fate, one of them inveighed against me: "Why didn't you bring the cat home? It was so unlucky to have met a man like you!"
This question gnaws at my conscience. Was I truly loving the cat by just feeding it once in a while? I fed it again on Sunday and will feed it more later, but why won't I bring it home? I apologized to my net friends. I said my busy work schedule forbids me from raising a cat at all.
I felt so sorry for the cat, but when I offered to help financially if any of my net friends would adopt the cat (many of them are in Shanghai or nearby cities), or tell me whether there was a good cat refuge around, no one answered. Eerie silence.
A collective human disregard of animal misery. I'm no better than any other human being, but I will keep feeding the cat before I find a refuge for it. I've called some refuges but their phone numbers are outdated.
I stopped and stooped to "talk" to it in the shabby - filthy indeed - lane in which I found it. It opened its mouth as if to "meow," but it was so weak that no voice came out. I saw its eagerness to be fed and caressed.
I had no food with me. I could not bring it to work. "What can I do for you, meow?" I asked it, or rather myself. The cat lowered its puckered eyelids, giving the damp ground a blind stare as I stood up to leave. Its hope that my arrival would change its fate was fading away. We were destined to be strangers, I said to myself.
On Saturday, again on my way to work, I came to see the cat in the same dilapidated lane, this time with cat food in my hand. No sooner had I sprinkled the Whiskas food on the ground than the cat devoured it. I took pictures and uploaded them in my blog. Then came my nightmare.
While many of my net friends showed great sympathy to the cat and their sense of helplessness about its fate, one of them inveighed against me: "Why didn't you bring the cat home? It was so unlucky to have met a man like you!"
This question gnaws at my conscience. Was I truly loving the cat by just feeding it once in a while? I fed it again on Sunday and will feed it more later, but why won't I bring it home? I apologized to my net friends. I said my busy work schedule forbids me from raising a cat at all.
I felt so sorry for the cat, but when I offered to help financially if any of my net friends would adopt the cat (many of them are in Shanghai or nearby cities), or tell me whether there was a good cat refuge around, no one answered. Eerie silence.
A collective human disregard of animal misery. I'm no better than any other human being, but I will keep feeding the cat before I find a refuge for it. I've called some refuges but their phone numbers are outdated.
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