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Health & Fitness

Foreclosure Cat

These days animals are getting left behind when people lose their homes. Here's the story of the foreclosure cat that is now a part of my life.

Back when the market started to slide I was fortunate enough to cultivate some relationships with banks and I ended up with a couple of good clients.  Recently I was contacted by one of my banks to sell a property and handle the cash for keys situation.  The owner moved shortly before the planned exchange and a relative greeted me on the move out date to facilitate the the transaction.

Everything was out of the house and as it should have been except one tiny detail.  No plans were made for the hungry, meowing older grey cat which lived in the front yard and had been taken care of by the now former owner of the house.  I asked the relative what he was planning to do with the cat and he said he might have another relative pick it up, but he didn’t sound convincing.  That was after he popped the top of the last can of cat food and placed the can next to an empty, dirty cat bowl.  This relative was obviously not a cat person, and he certainly wasn’t this cat’s person.

I guess he thought that since the cat lived outside it would be okay if he just left it behind.  After the relative left I knocked on the neighbor’s doors on either side of the house to see if anyone wanted an abandoned cat but nobody answered.  Later that day I returned to the property and the cat meowed at me repeatedly.

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His can of cat food had been somewhat eaten in the middle where the cat could dig his face into the can.  I took a small stick, because there was nothing else to use, and emptied the contents of the can into his dirty bowl.  The cat immediately began eating.

That evening when I got home from late from work I told the story of the abandoned cat to my wife and daughters and showed them a picture I had taken on my iPhone.  It took about 10 seconds before they were pleading for me to go pick it up and bring it home.  It was that or take it to the Marin Humane Society the next day and I didn't think anyone would be taking it home from there.

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So I returned to the foreclosure and the once again the meowing cat greeted me in the front yard.  It was dark, he was alone and came to me as soon as I got out of my car.  I gathered his now empty food dish and his water bowl and put them in my car.  Then I picked up the cat up, who was a bit greasy, and took him home where he is today in my backyard.

When I brought the cat home, the first we’ve owned, my daughters were practically walking on air.  They had a swim meet the next day, but that stayed up late anyway fussing over their new feline.  I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that cat probably has had more love and attention since it came into my family than it had in years.

Since we knew nothing about the cat we brought it to a vet who couldn’t tell us too much about it, but he did have a $300+ plan of us to get the cat caught up on shots and tested for any cat afflictions.  And I thought I was going to be able to just take the cat home, put it in my backyard and feed it.  What a naïve new cat owner I was.

The vet thought the cat might be as old as 12, which isn’t quite retirement age in human years but it’s getting up there.  The cat is slow.  It moves with a certain past its prime grace that borders on painful.  This is the only time in recent memory you could compare my own movements to those of a cat.  Boy that Andy sure moves like a cat: an old one that is.

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