adventures in animal control

Today this sweet puppy,

and this sweet puppy,


found a neighbor's cat in the backyard. Lucy (brown dog) was on the right side of the fence and attacked the cat while Phoebe and another random dog from the neighborhood barked their heads off. I managed to get Lucy into the house and scare away the stray dog, but the cat, while breathing, wouldn't move. And I am scared of cats and I actually didn't know who the cat belonged to. It had no collar, and I knew it was hurt, but I was not about to get close enough to help it. Not knowing what else to do, I called animal control.

About ten minutes later a neighbor came outside and I was talking to her about all the dogs barking and she recognized the cat as Almond, belonging to a neighbor from across the street. So we called the neighbor and their teenage kids came over and collected the cat, right as animal control showed up. I told the woman about the random dog and she was going to look for it too.

I was actually surprised that Lucy would actually physically go after the cat since she is such a scaredy cat (no pun intended.) If Phoebe had been on the correct side of the fence, that cat would have been in much more trouble, since she is quite the hunter. That poor cat might not have made it. I felt bad about calling animal control, since although I am scared of cats, I don't really like to think about them putting an animal down. But I thought it would be better for the cat to be put down in a humane way than limp off and die under a bush somewhere. Hopefully, our neighbors took it to the vet and had it checked out. And hopefully, they will also put a collar on it.

Of course, all this happened first thing this morning when I was still in shorts and a tank top, no bra. I managed to quickly brush my teeth and put on a bra before talking to my neighbor and before animal control showed up. Oh, and when I called my husband to tell him what was going on, he asked me what kind of noise the cat was making, so I imitated it for him. He laughed so hard that he was about crying on the other end of the phone. It was so supportive (not.) He was in his office with a couple of other people and as he was relaying the story about me outside trying to get the dog off the cat and help the cat and that I had no bra on and I was scared of the cat, he was dying with laughter. Not about the cat being hurt, but about how I was describing it.

Ahhh, my life just never is normal, isn't it?