Cat

We have a cat which we found on a Saturday night at a park during the height of this year's cherry blossom season. It was meowing loudly from up in a sakura tree so we approached it. I thought it was simply upset from being caught up in the tree, but after climbing up, retrieving the cat, and placing it back on the ground, we noticed that much of its two rear paws were covered in a thick, dry, black, oily substance. We felt quite sorry for it, and as it followed us as we walked the path to the park's exit, we discussed whether we should adopt it, as it didn't seem to be a "park" cat, which are usually ugly, dirty, and bent-tailed.

We decided to come back the next day to see how it was doing. It was raining that Sunday and sure enough, the little wet cat crawled meowing out of the bushes where we had left it the night before. Again, we contemplated taking it home.

The odd thing about the whole situation was that my girlfriend hated cats. There are many alley cats in this Japanese city (in most, I think) and whenever we'd see one while driving, my girlfriend would hit the accelerator pedal and attempt to run it over. Now, I'm sure this was all done in jest, but I know that she was definitely not enamoured by these furry animals.

So, I was under the impression that the first "discussion" and the later "contemplation" would be over very quickly when I reminded her of her feelings for felines. However, a transformation must have occurred within her, because she began pleading with me to bring the cat home with us.

So we did. Now we had a noisy, hungry, oily cat in our house. What were we to do? Well, obviously, we started rubbing petroleum jelly into the cat's rear paws to get the dry oil out. Who wouldn't? But this didn't work as spectacularly as we'd hoped. In the next few days and weeks, we cut the affected fur off the cat when given the opportunity. Finally, he started to again resemble a normal cat.

We have started taking the cat on little excursions back to the park, in the hope that (well, for me anyway) he'll decide to make his life there, instead of in the confines of the two rooms he has taken over on the main floor of our house. Thus far, he has always followed us back to the car, to make the journey back home with us.