Touched By a Trucker

eldragon

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Hey, this is the animals / nature forum!

Today I was almost brought to tears by what I saw while driving down Highway 49.


A large semi-truck swerved into the next lane (no cars) in order to avoid hitting a squirrel.


Little things like that make my day.

It reminds me of another story that doesn't involve a trucker or a squirrel.

A few weeks ago I was at Petsmart and noticed some of the animals from The Humane Society were there in hopes of being adopted. But on that particular morning, all eyes of several cats and dogs were on someone walking down a petfood aisle. I followed their glance to see the adoption counselor from the Humane Society - walking down the petfood snack aisle - her arms were loaded with kitty treats and doggie treats.

These people make minimum wage, but she was spending a good $15 on treats for her friends.

I was so touched, the next week when I was at the Humane Society to have 3 cats spayed/neutered, and to adopt another dog - I paid a compliment to the manager regarding the employee I saw.


P.S - here is the cutie dog I adopted 2 weeks ago.
 

country-writer

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A few years ago, I was called out to rescue a "feral cat." The cat was about 85 miles from where I live in a barn and they couldn't get near it. When I arrived and went into the barn, I was surprised to see not a "feral" cat but a really messed up traditional Persian.

Long story short, he stayed with us for 48 days and I went on some websites to find him a good home. A trucker heard of the story and volunteered to truck this cat to the new home in California.

Cat and owner are doing fine today, and the trucker is back on his route back east helping out other cats in need. He also has 5 cats that travel with him all the time.

Truckers rock!
 

TheIT

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Some friends of mine have acquired most of their cats by picking up strays. One of the cats was rescued when my friend stopped in the middle of a left turn into a busy street to grab the kitten who had run into the middle of the intersection.
 

oarsman

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eldragon said:
A large semi-truck swerved into the next lane (no cars) in order to avoid hitting a squirrel.

Little things like that make my day.

You need this bumper sticker here . "Give Wildlife a Brake"...it is free from the Humane Society. :)
 

DragonHeart

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When we first found Chaos he was actually a stray, I estimated he was around a year old. This was when we lived in Pennsylvania (I only stayed for the summer; my mother lived there for about a year total before moving back here) in a town house condominium. No pets allowed there. Didn't stop us from letting him in. :D

The neighbors got nosy though and told the landlady. She sent the maintenance guy around looking for him during the day when my mom and brother were at work. We later found out that if they caught him they were going to "dispose" of him. They didn't find him. He was happily asleep in the upstairs bedroom when they were poking around in the yard. I scared the bejeesus out of the guy too cause he didn't know I was there. Pulled back the blinds while he was standing right outside the sliding door. XD They didn't try that again.

When we moved back here at the end of the summer, we smuggled him up with us. Never did find his original owners, but we figured he liked us better anyways. At first he rode in my mom's car while my uncle and I had the rented Penske truck, but he cried so much she had to pull over and hand him over to us. He stopped crying immediately and happily sat in the truck cab for the entire eight-hour drive. ^^

And now he's my permanant lap buddy. Now if he'd just stop taking his name literally...

~DragonHeart~
 

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Interesting topic. I had 7 stray cats for a few years but I'm now down to 4. A friend left the porch door slightly ajar and the 'smart' one figured out how to pull it open, leading to the great cat escape. Of the 7, one didn't even consider leaving. I found her sitting by the door looking outside and she seemed pretty bored by the concept of freedom. Three eventually returned, one got hit by a car and one literally 'disappeared' without a trace. One is still lurking about but I imagine when winter arrives he'll come back inside.

I actually based my novel on these little furbags as well as a short story. Life is very interesting with 6-1/2 cats around!
 

GHF65

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My favorite stray story involves the kitten a friend dropped off for me to give as a gift to a neighbor. The neighbor couldn't take him, so I did. He'd been born under my friend's deck and was living there when he was collected and brought to me.

The first night I made him a nest under my deck so he'd feel at home, then I brought him in and did the ear mite treatment and other basic maintenance before turning him loose again. That little taste of "in" was all it took. I was maybe ten minutes into a TV show when I heard him crying. I opened the front door, and there he was, clinging to the screen. I let him in, and the only time in the 19 years he lived with us that he left the house after that was by accident--he fell out the window twice. He became so allergic to freedom that he lived first between the floor joists under the bathtub, then between the sheets in the linen closet where no one could accidentally let him out. We changed his name from "Little Pansy Dottie Face" (the neighbor was an elderly woman named Dot, and she insisted on naming him--what could I say?) to Closet Kitty. I found a vet who made house calls. :Shrug:

He finally learned to love the outdoors, but not until a year before he died. According to the animal communicator I use, he was partially deaf and mostly blind, so he wasn't afraid anymore. He also had a tumor, of which he was aware but we were not. He knew his time was limited, and he was right. He covered my thirty acres like he needed to memorize it, working gradually out from the house into the pastures and woods, but always home in time for dinner. I expected him to wind up lunch for one of the foxes or coyotes that live here, but his luck was impeccable right to the end. The psychic said he was using up some of his nine lives. :snoopy:

Over the years, all but one of my cats have been strays. They bring a little something extra to the table, don't you think?
 

DragonHeart

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Schoolmarm said:
Over the years, all but one of my cats have been strays. They bring a little something extra to the table, don't you think?

Definitely. We've never bought a pet from the store. Every single cat we've ever owned has either been a stray or part of a litter (two of our cats had litters; we kept one kitten from each and found homes for all the rest).

The strays we rescued always ended up being way more attached to us than say, the kittens from the litters. Chaos is our only cat right now, but he's basically my baby. If he doesn't know where I am he sits there and cries until I come find him. He drives my mom nuts whenever I go on vacation with my best friend's family lol. Usually by time I come home she's ready to throw him at me cause he won't leave her alone.

Once I get my own house I'm planning on adopting at least one more cat. The last time I went to a shelter it really broke my heart. They had this 13 year old male lying on top of a row of cages sleeping in the sun, very listless and depressed. No one would take him because he was so old. We'd already been chosen by a 2-year old female who'd recently had a litter, but I really wish I could have taken that old male with us. That's around the point when I decided that when I get my own place, I'll go out of my way to adopt those older cats who just can't find homes. It's the least I can do.

~DragonHeart~
 

GHF65

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Just be careful, Dragonheart. Sounds as if you could turn into a Crazy Cat Lady in a heartbeat! :ROFL:

While you're busy collecting old cats, you might also want to put some time into harassing your local pols to fund a cat rescue and come up with penalties for those folks (here it's mostly farmers) who harbor endless streams of intact feral cats and for people seen dropping off unwanted cats along the side of the road.

For the past two years the NAEP (National Association of Equine Practitioners) has been meeting and working to find a solution to the problem of unwanted horses, many of which are a result of bad backyard breedings and the terrible attitude show riders have toward their disposable mounts. Cats suffer the same indignity. Write letters. Contact representatives. Volunteer at a shelter. Run fund-raisers. Apply for non-profit status and start a program that will cover the cost of neutering for any owner who takes in a stray.

Most municipalities have regulations (usually courtesy of the health department) regarding how many cats (or dogs) an owner can keep, so there's no way any one person (or one shelter, for that matter) can take in enough animals to really make a difference. The difference has to be made at the starting point of the problem.

:Soapbox: Yup, that's me up on that soapbox.
 

SHBueche

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Pam, thanks so much for posting the story about the trucker and the squirrel. Someday I am afraid I may actually kill a person while trying to avoid running over a squirrel, I seem to have my eyes in 'alert mode' looking for squirrels while driving. My youngest son, Conor, is a squirrel lover like me. "Mom, there's a squirrel," he yells while I am driving.
 

DragonHeart

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Schoolmarm said:
Just be careful, Dragonheart. Sounds as if you could turn into a Crazy Cat Lady in a heartbeat! :ROFL:

It runs in my family. :D My great aunt has been in the paper before as the "cat lady" cause she has 20+ cats...all indoor. That's a lot of litterboxes. >.> I doubt I'd ever take it to that extreme, but I can't make any promises either. What can I say, I just love cats. :)

~DragonHeart~
 

GHF65

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You'll never beat my friend who has 90 cats living in her house. She finally got approval as a non-profit so she can accept donations of food for the cats, but she doesn't find homes for them. She keeps them. All of them. You want to talk litter boxes? She uses a plastic wading pool!

Trust me, 20 is more than enough no matter how much you love cats. In fact, I find three to be pretty good.
 

eldragon

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90? no way!

I have 12 and that's really quite alot of catfood to buy.

I love them all, though.

We have the most beautiful black kittens you ever saw. When they were born in May - they were white. Their grandmother is siamese, so thought they might look like her - but they turned solid black - like panthers.

Their mother nursed them for a full 4 months. I kid you not. She is the best cat mother I have ever seen. She is constantly with them - playing with them, etc.

2 of the kittens have been spayed/neutered, as has the mother. Only one boy left to do. They are exquisitely beautiful and healthy and happy - contented cats.


There was 4 of them but we gave one to an electrician working here at our house. Another one of them asked for a kitten, too, but I declined. He had his mind set on a particular kitten that is my daughter's favorite, and I wouldn't give it to him.

They are fine here anyway.
 

eldragon

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You'll never beat my friend who has 90 cats living in her house. She finally got approval as a non-profit so she can accept donations of food for the cats, but she doesn't find homes for them. She keeps them. All of them. You want to talk litter boxes? She uses a plastic wading pool!


Inside her house? A litterbox the size of a kiddie pool? How the heck can she afford the litter for it? The food for the cats? Flea treatment?



You really should post an address we can send donations to. She's a hero!
 

GHF65

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No, not a litterbox the size of a kiddie pool. The litter box is a kiddie pool! Pretty much every penny she makes goes into feeding the cats and the horses she keeps.

If anyone actually wants to send donations for these cats, PM me and I'll put you in touch with her. I don't want to post her contact infor on a public forum. Though there are lots of good folks out there, there are also some idiots. BB posts show up in google searches, and she doesn't need to be harrassed.