Pets live in poverty, too

Earlier Wednesday morning I heard a cat meowing very loudly outside of my window. Thinking I was dreaming it, I fell back asleep and didn't give it a second thought. That afternoon, as I was putting in some laundry in the basement of the building, a woman about my age came downstairs carrying a cat. She said it wasn't hers, but had wandered into the building, and she was trying to find its owner. I told her it wasn't ours, and she carried the cat back upstairs. I thought that was the end of it.

Apparently, she never found the cat's owner. A few hours later I was about to leave the apartment to run errands when I saw the cat sitting on the stairs near our apartment door. As I walked out of the apartment, it ran toward me, half meowing and half crying. I went back inside, filled a bowl with milk, and brought it back to the cat.

This was probably my first mistake. The cat immediately warmed up to me, and I went back inside to text Taylor to see if we could keep her. I've been wanting a pet for a while now, but with our incomes and expenses, we just can't afford to support another living being. Sadly, cat food, toys, litter, and vet bills don't have a place in our budget.

Upon receiving Taylor's texts and frantic calls confirming these truths, I opened the door just to check if the cat was still in the hall. Sure enough, the cat had been waiting on our doorstep and ran right inside my apartment! I didn't mind, though. She walked around a little and I prepared a can of tuna for her. I have heard cats like tuna.

As she ate, I searched the yellow pages for animal shelters where we could take her. Even though we couldn't keep her, I didn't want to just leave her out in the cold! The first shelter I called was filled to capacity and couldn't take her. I called the only other shelter listed, but they were either on the other line or away from the phones and couldn't answer. Their automated message told me I could call the police department to pick up stray animals. So I did. But they couldn't pick her up until about 9 A.M. the next day, so that wasn't going to work. I called the 2nd shelter back 3 times before I got through and found that we could take her there. By this point, the cat had found a bell on a string and so I played with her out in the hallway until Taylor got home and we could take her to the shelter.

It was hard to give her up, but I knew it was best for all involved. Like many people right now, we couldn't afford to keep an animal. In fact, the people at the shelter said they have seen an increase in pets left at the shelter and a decrease in adoptions because people can't afford to take care of their pets. And I think that's a sad indicator of the times.

In my mind, I know that every living thing, pets included, deserve to be taken care of. But when you work at a foodbank, it's hard to think about meeting pets' needs when 1 in 6 kids struggle with hunger in America. I guess it's just another reason why we AmeriCorps*VISTAs need to work a little harder to save the world. In the meantime, in addition to your local foodbank, maybe consider donating a little money/pet food to your local animal shelter. I'm sure they could use the help.