Bonus Karma Points

Last night we rescued ANOTHER cat.

The girlfriend went out to dinner and a movie with her Ex, mistakenly thinking that this Friday was the X-Men 2 Crit-tanza. That’s my contribution to the Enlgish language for the day:

Critanza: (krit-tan-za)

1) A lame attempt to invent a new word for the sake of claiming one does what Shakespeare did in a pathetic bid for literary relevance.

2) A gathering of enthusiastic and/or pretentious film buffs/fans/wannabe directors to gleefully complain about the movie they just watched.

So anyway… The crit-tanza was not this Friday, but the next Friday, and so she had arranged for a diversion so as not to sit at home alone, only to find out that that’s what I ended up doing, and what she’ll end up doing next week. Further addendum to this already confused plot is that in the end, she decided her lack of enthusiasm for comic-to-movie projects might be overlooked this time if it meant she didn’t have to play with our cat for six hours, so she’s goin’! Whoo!

SO. ANYWAY… When she came home last night and I was hip deep in bashing a million buzillion giant robots in Zone of the Enders: The Second Runner, she ran across Plea For Attention Cat, yet another in a seemingly endless string of cats around the neighborhood with a distinct and very disturbed personality disorder. This cat normally hangs around our building and we had to rescue it (Or so we thought) once when we saw him meowing pitifully from the ledge of the second floor. 45 minutes of walking from window to window of the main hall eventually got to one window where it clambered out of its own accord and thanked us for our trouble by getting all affectionate. Then it went and did it again next week, so we gave up and decided if it wanted to con people into taking pity on it, then it would have to con someone else. We paid our dues.

Last night however, she found it sitting on the “Welcome” matt of our next door neighbors, staring up at her, with blood on its mouth and a raspy meow that sounded like something formerly attached was now rattling around inside like a baby’s toy. After some debate, we decided that maybe it was time to get it some medical attention. A quick call to the Mount Pleasant Animal Hospital (Open 24 hours!) revealed that we could bring that cat in for a meager 100$ consultation fee, and have an additional 30-50 tacked on for some kind of sedation to ease its pain. Feeling charitable, but not filthy stinkin’ rich, this was NOT an option. Instead we went for the somewhat less glamarous Call The Pound option (IE, SPCA) who actually showed up at 4 in the morning to pick up this mangy and seriously injured cat that we had somehow managed to stuff into Zero’s cat carrier box. Zero himself was curious as hell, and only hid for 5 minutes. After that, his rubber-necking instincts took over and I guess he decided that anything meowing in that much pain couldn’t present a threat, so we spent a good portion of the evening trying to keep him from checking out the other cat for fear that maybe he had feline SARS or something and the last thing I wanted was for an act of good will to end up killing my own cat.

Anyway, the cat is now gone. The guy who picked him up gave his legally required statement to the effect that there was no guarantee of adoption, and that he would be euthanized at the SPCA’s discretion if it came to that. Considering how banged up that cat was, he’d probably welcome it.

Oh well…