It all started with a stray. A cute innocent looking little grey ball of fur with darker grey stripes stumbled along the garden into my path, mewing through a gurgle of drool. The poor little thing looked so pathetic that I couldn't help but pick it up. I knew that it was likely to have rabies, but I didn't care at that moment. I wrapped it in my light spring coat and walked through the newly budding plants of the local park, intent on finding out what I could do for the poor critter. We got to my studio apartment and I finally realized just how bonkers this was. I held a kitten in my coat that could have rabies! I shrugged and decided that the best thing to do was to call the vet. At least they might know what to do and if it really had rabies, then... well I guess the vets would do whatever vets do.
"Georgetown Veterinary Clinic, this is Kelly."
"Hi, Kelly." I couldn't tell if 'Kelly' was a really low pitched girl, or a higher pitched guy, "I found a kitten that's drooling all over the place. Looks pretty bad. Can I bring it in?"
"Sure, hun. We have an opening at two. Can you be here by then?"
Hun..? "Yeah, I can. You don't have anything any sooner?"
"Nope. That's the earliest."
"Alright. Two it is."
"Name and a number we can use to reach you."
I'd almost hung up, but Kelly's voice kept me on the line, "Jason Jones." I said and rattled off the cell phone number I'd had since my senior year of high school, strange area code and all.
A few back and forth exchanges later and I was on my own with a drooling kitten. I sighed, and it looked up at me, a string of saliva running from one partially exposed tooth to the green portion of my windbreaker. I winced, I'd just washed that jacket too. We had a few hours to kill so I shrugged and took the slobbery thing into the bathroom and placed it in the tub, jacket and all. No use getting something else dirty to make the poor miserable thing comfortable. I closed the bathroom door so it wouldn't follow me and went to the corner of my room that doubled as a kitchen. My landlord would skin me alive if she knew I had a cat in my apartment, but what she didn't know couldn't hurt her, right? Unless she was allergic... ah well, the poor critter was only there until two any way. I opened my fridge and tried to find something that resembled milk. Wading through the leftover boxes from McDonald's and KFC, I finally found a half gallon of the stuff, and it smelled mostly good, so I poured some into a bowl and brought my offering into the mewling ball of fur scratching in my tub. The little guy went at the milk like a starved thing and I crouched down to watch. It was kind of cute in a drowned rat sort of way. I'd always been partial to cats, and kittens were fun to play with, so long as there was string or laser pointers involved, but this guy looked like he didn't have much more than eating food left in him for a while.
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