Let Someone Else Take Care of It

We found a stray kitten a couple of weeks ago. Every morning, when I took my two adopted Labbies out in the morning to do their business; this little kitten would come out of the bushes and meow at me. She wouldn't run from the dogs and would make her way over to me and look up at me with hungry eyes. After a week, I gave in and started to leave some food for her outside. The neighbor had briefly taken her inside and considered adopting her, but had a change of heart and so she was in need of a home.

My cat is a psycho-cat, and if any other cat comes near the house, he will start spraying everything inside, so adopting this stray kitten is out of the question. We called “Pet Rescue by Judy” to see if she would take the kitten. Judy said she had 200 cats that needed a home and we would need to foster the kitten. So we took the kitten to the vet, had her neutered, checked for worms and feline aides and then given her all her shots.

It has been a week now since this stray cat has been in our home and sure enough, our other cat started spraying everything in sight. Stray Kitty has to go. So I made 150 fliers and headed to the mall to see if I could convince somebody to adopt this little kitten. The Oviedo Mall security guard ran me off, so I headed to Target. After 30 minutes of one rejection after rejection, I gave up, went inside, bought and Starbucks Chai-tea and headed home.

I took my flyers and started going door to door, leaving them on the neighbor’s mail boxes or talking to any neighbor that happened to be out. It went something like this, “Hi, we found a stray kitten. Did you happen to lose a kitten? Would you be interested in adopting a kitten? How about a family member? Aunts, uncles, sisters, brothers, mom, dad, do you know anybody who might be interested? Thank you anyway. Have a nice day.”

I’m finding it harder to find a home for this kitten than I thought it would be. Has the world has changed or is it just me? It seems to me that we have become a nation of “Let somebody else do it.” There are thousands unwanted animals in shelters that will be killed unless someone adopts them. We know it but we rationalize that someone else will take care of it. Besides, who has the time to care? Hungry children need food? Somebody else will take care of it, someone who has more money than I do. They’ll do it.

The big events like Katrina brings out the benevolence in a lot of people, but the in-between times there are so many needs that go unmet. I wonder if it has always been this way of if we have somehow become less responsive to the needs of others in my lifetime. We know things happen but seem that shouldn’t happen but seem less willing to do anything about it. Torture, yeah, it’s not good, but nothing I can do about it. Someone else will take care of it. The Baby Boomers use to care, we stopped a war, the Vietnam War. We use to demonstrate and stand up for what we believed in… now we care more about standing in line at Wal-Mart to get a $400 laptop computer and will knock people over if they get in our way. A stray kitten, who has time to care about that?