In the category of no good deed ever going unpunished, last November I took on the temporary care of a cat belonging to one of the thousands of fellow employees. Scott quit the company & was moving back to Scotland; he needed someone to look after Fell for six months after a rabies test, so she wouldn’t have to spend time quarantined in a UK kennel.
The Brits call this the Pet Travel Scheme; essentially it means that the animal can spend the six-month quarantine period in your home after both vaccination & testing for rabies. The plan was for Fell to stay with me & then Scott would either return her to collect her or arrange to have her shipped to him. (He appealed to a group of employees on a cats email list; I was the only idiot to respond.)
It hasn’t been a totally felicitous time, as Fell didn’t like my permanent cat, Pele; so I had to keep Fell in the office when I wasn’t around. However, it was temporary, right?
Well, around May, when arrangements should have been made for the travel, I couldn’t raise Scott. No reply to any of my emails. I had to do some Internet sleuthing to find what I thought might be a phone number & have a friend of mine in England call him before he came online late June.
Oh, yes; still planning to get Fell. He’d start the machine turning…
Only next day I received a different communication: well, it’s going to cost $2500, & he can’t afford it…
Uh, that would have been good information to have before he made the grand plans last fall & roped me into caring for her.
The end result is that today I took Fell back to Meow, the shelter she was adopted from & surrendered her back to their care. So I’m the one who essentially abandoned her. She didn’t deserve that, & I feel really lousy that I’m the one she associates with it. (I just couldn’t keep her in my new place & this was never supposed to be a permanent arrangement—I was meant to be helping out for a while.)
Plus, Meow has at least six black cats I could see—Fell’s going to be one of many competing for attention.
Another Seattle event I want to forget about.
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