So, I had this neighbor girl when I was younger. I can’t really disclose her real name here because I don’t exactly have her permission to post obnoxious stories about her on the internet. So, I’m just going to make up a different name for her for now. We’ll call her Marti Ganetti.
Now, Marti Ganetti used to come over fairly often to play. And on one of those occasions, I informed her rather mournfully that one of my cats had run away. And Marti, being the generous soul that she was, took it upon herself to track down my beloved pet for me. A week or so went by until one afternoon I was standing out in my front yard when here Marti came, galavanting along, with this cat hoisted upon her hip.
“Maggie! I found it! I found your cat!”, she exclaimed, rather triumphantly. I glanced over at the feline trapped in Marti’s arms. It was indeed not my cat, so I told her so. She then began arguing with me. The conversation went something like this:
“That’s not my cat.”
“Yes it is. This is your cat.”
“No. No, it’s not. I know what my cat looks like. That’s not my cat.”
“Yeeees, yes it is. Your cat was grey, right? This is a grey cat. It’s gotta be yours.”
“Marti! That’s NOT my cat! Like, where did you get that cat, anyways?”
“Oh, I found it in a yard down there.” (She then pointed down the street from whence she came.)
“What?! You should take it back! You can’t just take someone’s cat out of their yard! That’s their cat.”
“No, I don’t have time to take it back. Can’t I just leave it here? Besides, you don’t have your cat. You need a cat. You can have this one.”
“MARTI! You can’t leave the cat. My other cats will fight with that cat. Just take it back.”
“No, no. I don’t have time. I’ll just put it somewhere else.”
She then proceeded up the street, a couple houses from mine and plopped the cat off in a neighbor’s yard. A neighbor who happened to be drunk more often than he was sober. A neighbor who had a particular abhorrence for stray cats. The next thing I knew, our exasperated neighbor began yelling from the top of his lungs while shaking his fist. It went something like this:
“You BEGGARS!!! All you ever want is FOOD! I already have THREE of you! GET OUT OF HERE!”
At first I thought he was yelling at Marti. Turns out he was just yelling at the cat.
The cat just sat there all oblivious. Marti, on the other hand, probably never skedaddled so fast.
And that’s all I have to tell you about that.
