In which I hit a Cat

with my car . . .

Last night, driving along the "one way" section of 2nd Avenue, at roughly 10pm, a black and white cat darted in front of my car. I braked as quickly as I could, but I couldn't avoid hitting the cat. I just shuddered reflecting back on the horrible sound. I circled back around expecting to find a lifeless cat in the middle of the road. Someone's pet. An LOL cat maybe. He can has cheezeburger. Assuming it was dead based on the horrible "thud" I'd heard, I contemplated running home to get a box to put the poor kitty in and then decide what to do. (In fact, that happened when my and my sister's puppy "Newton" was hit by a car and killed twenty years ago. The driver that hit our dog, stopped, put the dog in a box, and our neighbor told him where to put the box. Awful.) Driving back, I almost threw up. I did tear up.

When I circled back around, there was no cat in the middle of the road. Instead, it had crawled to the side of the road and was crying. I pulled my car horizontally along side it, turned on my hazard lights, and left my headlights on. The cat wasn't wearing a collar and I didn't know if it was tame, wild, or merely stray. An older man came out of a nearby apartment building and said that he'd a collision on the street and a cat crying. He looked at the cat and said, "I think that's my neighbors cat."

He walked back to the apartment building and returned with a middle-aged lady who was very, very dramatic. You've seen her or someone like her before. On Cops. Or the news. She's the eyewitness that all the camera crews go to because she's crying, and loud, and saying, "I knew this was going to happen. It was just a matter of time. I warned them over and over. Oh Jesus! Oh Jesus!" She took a look at the cat and recognized it as belonging to one of her tenants. And then she did the tv news routine I just described. She went into her building to get the owner.

She returned with a young girl of 20, maybe 21. This girl was basically dressed for an interview at Urban Outfitters. And just as helpful as an Urban Outfitters employee. The cat wasn't hers. It is her roommate's. She texted her roommate immediately. When she finally got her roommate on the phone, she had to convince her roommate - who was currently city blocks and blocks and blocks away (at a party? watching videos? at a Tower film?) without a car - that she needed to get a ride home right away and that walking home wouldn't be quick enough. The lack of urgency on their part rendered me mute. Except I did offer to go and pick the roommate up, but she'd already secured a ride.

The older man who gratefully remained at the scene suggested that "this may just be a situation warranting a 911 call." I disagreed. Instead, I Googled "emergency vet salt lake city" from my phone. I got a 24 hour vet facility in Draper on the phone and asked if they could direct me to a closer facility. He gave me the phone number for a veterinary emergency center closer to us. I got them on the phone, explained the situation, but the operator said they wouldn't be able to help because they were just taking into surgery a bassett hound that had eaten a rock and that was going to require all their staff and occupy them most of the night. He gave me the name of another facility and I asked him for assistance on how to help poor kitty. He suggested wrapping it tightly in a blanket and be aware that it might get mean.

We wrapped the cat in a blanket, but I couldn't imagine the poor crying kitty getting mean. Kitty looked so sad and scared. It wasn't bleeding, but it tried to walk and it basically had to drag its back legs. As though they were both broken. Or a leg and a hip. I don't know. It was awful.

The owner finally arrived. She was also ready to interview at Urban Outfitters. This girl had no sense of urgency. Whatsoever. "Dude, I hit your cat. It might die. A little emotion, please," I wanted to say.

Meanwhile, the landlord lady, like me, had been trying to find a 24 hour vet that
could provide immediate help to the cat. She handed the owner a piece of paper with an address for the only emergency vet facility that could take the cat right away. The facility was on about 6200 South and Highland. Urban Outfitter, non-urgent, cat owner looked at the address and said, "That's way the hell out there."

At this point, I'm ready to tell these "dressed in Emo but not Emo inside" girls to get in my fucking car with the suffering cat so we could get it to the damn vet. But right then, a car was trying to exit a driveway and my car was blocking its path. So I got in my car to move it and my battery was dead. You know, because I'd left all the lights on to assist with this emergency situation that the cat's owner was treating as a non-emergency. So my car has to be pushed out of the way and I roll backwards down a hill and park it so that I can go back to the awful scene. Once parked, my car decided that the battery wasn't actually dead and starts right up. I leave it on and walk back to the scene.

I look around and don't see the non-Emo girls anymore, but the older man and landlord lady are still there. "What are you going to do," he asks me, "do you have Triple A?" I assume he means to cover the veterinary costs and I say, "No. Where are the girls, do they need a ride to the vet?" "They've already gone," he says, "What about our car?" "Oh, it started, I'm fine."

Then landlord landy went back into her "Oh Jesus. I knew this would happen. I've told those girls to be careful with that cat." routine. She and the old man were then very nice to me, thanked me for my help, and I thanked them and told them how great they were.

And then I went home. And wished for that cat to both live and find a better home. I also thought of everything I could have or should have done differently to help that poor animal.

Today's Song: - - silence - -