R
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So for the last couple weeks, there's been this fairly young cat hanging around the back of my office building. I'd say maybe 6-10 months old, he/she (we think it's a she) is pretty small.
Well, we call her Tripod. Why Tripod? She has something wrong with her back right hind leg. Either it was broken badly or she got attacked or something, cause she never puts weight on it and basically hops around on three legs all the time, unless she's sitting/laying down. I'm leaning more towards attacked because her fur is mostly black with some patches of brown/orange fur but the hurt leg is like pure gray/white hair.
She's real skittish. If you get too close, like within a foot or two, she will run (hop) away pretty fast. She mainly hangs out underneath various cars in the back parking lot, and kinda sleeps in a pile of those wood loading platforms they use to ship in stuff to a neighboring office building.
So the dilema is this.. Do we choose for her to live or die? Let me explain. She can't hunt. She just can't. She has a hard enough time hopping around as it is, and even though theres plenty of crickets and grasshoppers and other stuff a cat could eat, theres not a lot of regular wild food a feral cat can get out in the office area. There's woods nearby, across the parking lot, but she is in no shape to hunt. It's only a matter of time until someone accidentally runs her over in the parking lot cause she hangs out under cars or worse yet, some non-cat lover has a bad day and see's her and either hits her with a car or hurts her.
But it gets worse. Animal Control refuses to get her unless she is already contained, and catching her would be difficult. PLUS, we all know if we hand her over to Animal Control, they will just put her down, they won't try to heal her and give her to a shelter or home, they'll just automatically put her to sleep.
What do we do?
I say we cause me and some fellow co-workers have been mulling over what to do for a week or so now. We've been feeding her, putting bowls of catfood and water outside. She'll eat and eat and eat, so we know she's starving. When she's eating we can get pretty close. But aside from us, she has no source of food or water really..I mean its gotten this bad for her;
Sometimes people throw away the bowls we leave for her, so she has to end up drinking stagnant drain off water... Taking that picture damn near broke my heart to see her do that, I could easily have gave her water but some jerk threw away the bowls we set out, I had nothing to put fresh water in
What do we do? I hate to see her suffer and lord knows I don't want to walk out back one day for a smoke break and see her dead in the parking lot but at the same time we want to try to give her every chance we can at living. I can't bring her home, I've got 3 cats already, I have no place to keep her contained since until I could get her shots and such, I couldn't keep her around my indoor-only cats (which is all 3 I have). No one else from work whos been keeping an eye out for her can bring her home either.
*sigh*
Well, we call her Tripod. Why Tripod? She has something wrong with her back right hind leg. Either it was broken badly or she got attacked or something, cause she never puts weight on it and basically hops around on three legs all the time, unless she's sitting/laying down. I'm leaning more towards attacked because her fur is mostly black with some patches of brown/orange fur but the hurt leg is like pure gray/white hair.
She's real skittish. If you get too close, like within a foot or two, she will run (hop) away pretty fast. She mainly hangs out underneath various cars in the back parking lot, and kinda sleeps in a pile of those wood loading platforms they use to ship in stuff to a neighboring office building.
So the dilema is this.. Do we choose for her to live or die? Let me explain. She can't hunt. She just can't. She has a hard enough time hopping around as it is, and even though theres plenty of crickets and grasshoppers and other stuff a cat could eat, theres not a lot of regular wild food a feral cat can get out in the office area. There's woods nearby, across the parking lot, but she is in no shape to hunt. It's only a matter of time until someone accidentally runs her over in the parking lot cause she hangs out under cars or worse yet, some non-cat lover has a bad day and see's her and either hits her with a car or hurts her.
But it gets worse. Animal Control refuses to get her unless she is already contained, and catching her would be difficult. PLUS, we all know if we hand her over to Animal Control, they will just put her down, they won't try to heal her and give her to a shelter or home, they'll just automatically put her to sleep.
What do we do?
I say we cause me and some fellow co-workers have been mulling over what to do for a week or so now. We've been feeding her, putting bowls of catfood and water outside. She'll eat and eat and eat, so we know she's starving. When she's eating we can get pretty close. But aside from us, she has no source of food or water really..I mean its gotten this bad for her;
Sometimes people throw away the bowls we leave for her, so she has to end up drinking stagnant drain off water... Taking that picture damn near broke my heart to see her do that, I could easily have gave her water but some jerk threw away the bowls we set out, I had nothing to put fresh water in
What do we do? I hate to see her suffer and lord knows I don't want to walk out back one day for a smoke break and see her dead in the parking lot but at the same time we want to try to give her every chance we can at living. I can't bring her home, I've got 3 cats already, I have no place to keep her contained since until I could get her shots and such, I couldn't keep her around my indoor-only cats (which is all 3 I have). No one else from work whos been keeping an eye out for her can bring her home either.
*sigh*
