by Jessica Kaaz

Created on: January 23, 2009

It was a long drive home from our honeymoon. With our heads spinning from the whirlwind week we just finished and thoughts of returning to our otherwise hum-drum lives creeping into our consciousness, I wasn't sure what I really heard when, as I watched my new husband fumble to unlock the front door in the midnight darkness, a feeble cry came from the neighbor's bushes. After a few minutes, though, I knew it was a cat cry. I owned three of my own beautiful felines and, though I didn't recognize this particular voice, I knew it was crying for help. I desperately wanted to help it, but finding it in the dark, in someone else's bushes, with my husband begging me to just get in the house made it nearly impossible to make a solid attempt at locating the mournful meow.

As soon as dawn hit, however, I popped out of bed and ran to the front door. Still in my robe and slippers, I flung the door open and ran to poke around in my neighbors landscaping, surely looking like some crazed lunatic to anybody unlucky enough to see me. A much softer meow was coming from somewhere, but I couldn't find it.

"What are you doing, honey?" my husband asked, still sounding sleepy.

"Trying to find the cat." I simply stated.

"Why? We have three of our own. We can't take care of another one and you know it." He had a point.

"I know, but it sounded like it was suffering and you know you wouldn't want one of our cats suffering if someone could help them, would you?"

"Alright," he said gruffly, defeated by my reminder of his love for his own pets, "but we can't keep it." With that, he was in the bushes with me, searching for the source of the faint cry for help.

"Found it!" he said joyously. "Oh, honey, maybe you should go in the house." Sadness clouded his voice.

"Why?" I came around to where he was bent over and saw the little bitty thing, huddled the way cats do it the cold, with its feet carefully tucked underneath it. It was grey tiger-striped, no more than a couple of months old, with dirt and twigs stuck to its fur, crusty eyes and the saddest little meow anyone has ever heard. I scooped it up immediately trying to console it, but it kept crying.

"What are you doing?" my husband asked. "It could have any number of diseases! We can't expose our cats to that."

I wasn't listening anymore at this point. I was going to find a large box, get it some food and water, clean it up and it could be an outdoor cat until the vet had a chance to check it out. But I wasn't going to let it sit there and suffer

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