Back in March, a couple of blocks from home, I saw a kitten sitting outside of a vacant lot. It was about six weeks old and absolutely adorable. I tried to approach it but it scrambled under the fence and there was no way I could follow. A couple of days later I saw it again, and I asked a shopkeeper whether or not that kitten had a human. The man told me that, as far as he knew, it had been abandoned. A few more days went by and I saw it again. This time I tried to catch it, but again it managed to slip away from me. I was about to go away for a couple of weeks, and I didn’t have anyone lines up to look after such a kitten, plus I knew that bringing it home would make my dog jealous and I knew she was going to have enough trouble dealing with the fact that I was going to be gone for two weeks anyway, so I reluctantly walked away.
Anyway, I figured that the kitten was so adorable that someone was bound to adopt it in my absence, but I was determined that, if the kitten was still there by the time I came back, I was going to adopt it myself. Sure enough, when I came back two weeks later the kitten was still there… dead just inside that fence. That day I learned a pretty harsh lesson about taking action and doing the right thing when the opportunity presents itself and not when it suits my schedule. I guess that was one of the reasons why, when a dog that was either lost or abandoned followed me home a few weeks ago, I didn’t hesitate to take him in. In the two blocks he had followed me it had become painfully obvious that that dog didn’t have a clue of how to cross a street and after what had happened with that kitten I dreaded the idea that the next time I walked out the door I would find that he had been run over by a car or something like that. So here he is, in part because of that nameless kitten, a kitten I failed to help, but one that taught me a lesson I hope never to forget.