The Halloween Cat

I love Halloween, but I doubt that I'll ever be able to spend another one without remembering what happened. In my mind, I'll forever remember Halloween as the anniversary of "the Cat Incident".

It was about this time last year that I was living in an orphanage, obviously I would've been over the age of 18, but a year before just before I moved in they'd started a new program where they "trained" you to be an adult between the ages of 18 and 21 if you had no where else to go. Well, being homeless and basically an orphan anyway, this sounded pretty good to me.

Now, it was a Christian orphanage, a Pentecostal one to be exact, and as such we weren't allowed to do anything for Halloween. It was "evil", so instead we were supposed to celebrate the harvest festival... which is funny in a sarcastic and hypocritical way, because that's exactly what most of the pagans were celebrating before their festival became Halloween... Basically, we weren't allowed to go to haunted houses or watch scary movies... they should've thought that one through better, because they put us nearly grown girls in a house all to ourselves with no adult supervision, you know... other than breathing down our necks every single day and using it for free labor, but I digress... We were alone at night, and that is when this incident happened.

Nikki and Nicole, respectively.

Well, I lived with two other girls that Halloween, Nikki and Nicole, and since we got a $5 a month allowance (which wasn't even an allowance, it was donated by a very nice lady) Nicole and I decided we would walk up the road to where there was a Halloween haunted trail.

Normally, this is what I look like when scary things happen.

Though terrified of the unknown, I laugh at monsters.  Who knew?

So we waited til after midnight and we bundled up nice and warm and Nicole and I left the Home and started walking out along the road. We laughed and talked, because at the time we were pretty good friends, though when I was kicked out earlier this year she started treating me like a pariah. Well, on the way over a bridge while we were laughing, there was a sudden sound. A sudden, unmistakable, sound, coming from the edge of the woods across the road on the other side of the bridge where there was a small dirt half circle that cars used to turn around.

It was the sound of a kitten crying out for help.

I didn't think, didn't look for cars coming (fortunately there were none), I just took off running towards the sound. It could've been anything, halfway over I even toyed with the idea it was a rapist trying to lure us over there, or it was those people we'd heard about on the news recently, the ones who'd leave car-seats with baby dolls in them on the side of the road and kill and car jack the people who stopped. I didn't stop, though, and I wasn't the only one: Nicole was right there beside me.

I got there first though, and bent down, making soothing noises and reaching into the bushes, praying silently that the cat would understand I was there to help. I felt something warm and furry bump my hand, so I reached down to where I felt the neck was, grasped the ruff of fur on the nape, and pulled the kitten out.

I was surprised to find that, while still a kitten, the cat was older than expected.

Nicole and I cooed over the kitty and held and petted it, wrapped up tightly in our jackets to stay warm, though we both knew the Home had a strict no pets policy. It was okay, though, because we were going to find this kitten some help.

Well, we were right there at the Haunted Trail, so we walked up there and talked to the people to see if they could hold onto the kitten for us, explaining we had just found it abandoned and crying. They agreed and even docked the price of admission for us, and we went on the trail... and ran for our lives because of chainsaw killers on the loose.

I "died" so many times.

When we got back it was to discover that the nice people had found out something awful about the kitten: both of her back legs were broken. Heartbroken we held the kitten and cuddled and petted her, swearing to call every vet in North Carolina when we got back to the Home. The nice people who ran the Haunted Trail even offered us a ride back up there, even though it was less than a mile. Well, it was cold out and we didn't want cars to scare the kitty, so we took them up on the offer.

After reaching the home, knowing no one "in charge" was awake, we decided to ask one the house parents if it would be okay to hold  on to  the kitty for just one night, because, after all, we would definitely find the kitty somewhere to go in the morning. One of the nicest house mothers in the place was where we went on Nicole's prompting, waking her up and showing her the cat, explaining what had happened. We could tell she was heartbroken, too. She also knew it was strictly against the rules, but she cracked and gave in and said that surely for just a night it would be okay.

So we crossed the driveway and went into our house and put the kitten on the floor and gave her some tuna and some water, and petted and loved on her, while I tried to find a vet that took emergency calls in the middle of the night. Obviously there were none, so frustrated we decided to go to bed...

That's when we discovered another heartbreaking thing: the kitten refused to stay still and sleep where we left her, she wanted to follow us, and she tried the best she could, hobbling after, mewling pathetically, dragging her legs.It hurt so much to lock her in the bathroom that night, but we figured it was the only way to get her to not hurt herself anymore.

The next morning I sat down with the phone book and the kitten and tried calling vets offices again, but no one would take her. I tried the Animal Shelter, and found out from them, blatantly stated, that "When we pick up cats we put them down right away." So I hung up on them and turned to Nicole. What would we do? Well, she suggested seeing if someone in the office could clear the cat staying on campus with the other mouser we had out by the barn. That is when all hell broke loose.  

(Pictures omitted because they're too damn sad.)

All night long we'd met nothing but nice, kind, people, and for doing such, the world was going to show us it's other side: using everything short of curse words, the lady in charge of our Independent Living program yelled and screamed us, even when we tried to explain. Using her infamous "no excuses" line, she told us we had to get rid of that cat right then and there, and she told us specifically to call the Animal Shelter.

I wasn't doing it, oh hell no. I knew what would happen to that kitten, so I tried calling places that took in abandoned cats... and that's when I got told something so heartbreaking and horrible I can still remember it. "There are a million abandoned cats in North Carolina and no one who wants them. We routinely have to put down healthy kittens because we don't have room. We can't take in a sick cat, we need that money to take care of the ones we have. Just think of it this way: if you hadn't found the cat she would've starved to death on the side of the road. At least now it will be quick and painless."

We were running out of time, we'd only been given an hour to get rid of the cat, and I'd just heard something so terrible and heartbreaking that I couldn't handle it anymore. So, crying and sobbing, I called the Animal Shelter back and told them our address, and I sat there, crying, holding the cat, until they came.

When I opened the door, it's like she knew what was happening. The man held out a cage for me to put her into,  and she clung to me with her claws, fur puffed up, looking panicked and struggling to escape, and I lowered her into it. I was sobbing, horribly, and one of the house parents, my old house parent, was standing on the porch with the man, staring.

I went back inside, closed the door, and tried not to feel so awful about myself.

Yes, our door was eggplant color, and no, I still felt horrible.

And I wish that's where this story ended, but it isn't. Because the lady in charge of our program showed up later to yell and scream at all three of us, even though Nikki tried to explain she'd been in bed asleep and hadn't known until she'd come into the kitchen that morning. The woman demanded to know, "Are you so stupid you don't know what goes on in your own home?!"

Nikki has the world's best poker face.

I held my tongue and cried, but that still wasn't the end of it. The next morning one of the men in charge of the whole orphanage came by to yell at us, and he said some things I just couldn't ignore. While he was demanding to know if we understood what we did was wrong, I couldn't hold my anger in any longer.

"It was against the rules, but we did the right thing." Was what I told him, and for the trouble of speaking up he yelled at me and demanded to know if I was looking to get kicked out. The Home routinely kicked us out if we didn't hold up their rules and regulations, even if they knew we had no where to go, and I had less places to go than most... but I couldn't help my anger, and my mouth moved on it's own when he kept yelling at us about how wrong we were. "I thought this was a Christian facility."

I thought he was going to explode when I said that. He certainly looked that way. He yelled louder and even told me I should've left the cat on the side of the road to die, and then threatened to kick me out once more if I didn't watch my mouth.

"And if you see me on the side of the road with a sign that says 'Hungry, please help', will you just keep on driving?"

It took them a few more months to find enough reasons, but when they finally kicked me out, they brought incident back up as a reason why I didn't follow the rules and had to be kicked out. I looked up, through my tears at loosing the only place I had to live, and said exactly how I felt, "I wasn't wrong. It may have been against the rules, but I wasn't wrong. I'd do it again. No one should be heartless enough to say they could've left that cat to die."