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The Kitten Angels

Impybat

this space for rent
Joined
Jul 13, 2004
Messages
311
Location
in the belfry
As requested by @escargot, here is the story of the Kitten Angels.

This happened in the early 90s. I was working as a pharmacy tech at a CVS at the time. I had an afternoon shift and since I didn’t have a car, I walked to work. We lived down the street from the plaza, so it wasn’t far; only 10 minutes or so.

It was a beautiful sunny day in late spring or early summer. I was walking along when a tiny orange kitten wandered out from some bushes in front of someone's house. Even though I was not far from work, I only had a few minutes to spare to visit with the kitten before my shift started.

Inexplicably, the kitten started to wander down the grassy embankment towards the very busy street. The traffic was routinely heavy here. But it was late afternoon, so there were even more cars and trucks whizzing by.

I called to the kitten, and started to slowly walk down after him. The closer I approached, the more he kept on edging farther out into the street. I tried to get him to stop, and I went to grab him, but he was still creeping closer to the line of traffic, which I felt was my fault.

But the little orange kitten did not understand that he was getting himself into a dangerous situation, and there was nothing I could say or do to make him understand. I was really nervous that this was going to end badly.

Suddenly, a blue van zoomed by, and I swear, whoever was driving sped up. And there was this awful thump.

I was speechless. It happened so fast, so I just stood there looking at the dead kitten in the street and silently freaking out. This entire event happened in the space of a minute.

I stood there awkwardly, not knowing whether I should knock on the nearest house’s door and ask if the kitten belonged to them, or just leave. Walking away seemed so cold and I felt like a callous asshole, but there was nothing I could do. Even worse, I felt like I inadvertently caused it by getting too close to him and scaring him or whatever. To this day I regret not acting quickly enough.

Then, something even more random happened. All the traffic cleared up and the street was empty. Not even 30 seconds later, a car pulled over to the side where I was standing. Two old ladies got out, and said, “Oh no! How terrible. Was this your cat?” And I told them what happened, and about the van that didn’t stop.

One of the ladies went into the trunk of the car, and pulled out a blanket. She said, “Don’t worry, we’ll take care of it.” She wrapped him up in the blanket. They got back in the car with the enshrouded kitten, and drove away.

I was astonished and relieved at the same time. Who were those mystery ladies, conveniently driving around at that exact moment with blankets in the trunk?
 
I’ve got my Spotify on, listening to ‘Betsy On The Roof’ by Julia Holter. It seems to strangely fit the sadness of Impybat’s story.
 
You couldn't have done more to stop that happening, I'm sorry you had such an awful experience. The ladies could obviously see how upset you were. Almost feels like they were there to take care of you, as much as the poor kitten.
 
This one always tears me up
 

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This made me cry, we lost our littlest cat to some horrible cancer a few weeks ago and you feel there should be some small earth tremor or thunderstorm to mark their passing.
We lost a cat to cancer back in 2009, the day we lost her there was a rainbow... I took that as a sign and it's stuck with me all this time.
 
I'm old , and I've loved and lost several beloved cats in my time.

If, as I do, you believe that life goes on for both humans and animals (especially ones we've personalized, given identities to), then there have got to be a wealth of caring, animal loving souls in the afterlife.
Some of them will choose to help those creatures at the moment of death and beyond.
I console myself with the thought that there are helpers , not necessarily known to me, who will comfort and help the pets get used to their new spiritual surroundings.
 
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