On
my regular route from my house to my coffee haunt this morning, I saw,
actually I heard first, a cat meowing, or rather crying, very loudly,
walking towards my direction, but on the opposite side of the road,
still quite far from me. He (let me just call him that not being sure of
his sex) meowed very loudly and continuously non stop, which to me was
very unusual. He just kept on and on meowing, which made me suspect
that he might be hurt and in pain. But he walked without a limp, looked
clean and pretty healthy.
As
he got closer, for whatever reason, he suddenly crossed to my side of
the road. I said to him 'Hello, what's the matter?' Usually most cats or
dogs I speak to in the street (I do that often) could sense that I am
an animal lover and would often respond in some fashion. A few times I
even had met a couple of them wanting to follow me home! He didn't, not
even as much as acknowledged my presence; just kept on walking ahead
and meowing on and on without as much as paused briefly to catch a
breath. I was convinced something was stressing him very much but I
didn't know what I could do. By then he had passed me, and I turned
around and followed him instead of the direction I should be taking,
while continued talking to him.
I
saw a lady who just parked her car on the side of the road, and she
looked to me to be a kind person. I ran up to her, told her quickly the
condition of the cat, and asked whether she thought as I did the cat
needed help, and whether we should get hold of the police or with her
car (I didn't have one), take the cat to a vet. She cast me a cold look
as if I was stark raving mad, said she had better things to do and
walked off without a backward glance. By now the cat had turned off the
corner to a side street. I hesitated a few seconds, signed and, sadly
& reluctantly, turned too back to where I was going before.
But
for the entire day today, I couldn't get the cat out of my mind,
wondering whether he was all right. I certain am not. I keep thinking
maybe I shouldn't have just left him in that stressed out state, or
whether there was really nothing I could do, for instance, called the
police. What would you have done?
What I wish most is to find out if anyone more knowledgeable about animal behaviour than I, knows what the loud, continuous and prolong meowing of a cat means.
No comments:
Post a Comment