darn it darn it darn it...

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I walked over to the lake again today at lunch. I'm going to have to do that more often. I knew I had to be back in time for a 1:00 conference call. And I was back with about 10 minutes to spare when I saw the cat. It was meowing and looking under a bush. I figured it was feral. We have a lot of feral cats by the office. But I stood and watched for a few minutes and then it turned around, meowed and ran toward me. Well sucker me, I petted it and it purred. It was so thin, but so friendly that it had to be lost or abandoned. So I picked it up, and it let me hold it. So here I am outside the office, no purse or anything with this cat. I couldn't just leave it there and it didn't seem to be in any hurry to be put down. I knew the guard wouldn't let me in with the cat, but I thought I might find a box to put it in and then I could take it to the vet and have it checked out. Naturally there were no boxes outside the mail room or by the trash bins. So I walked toward the building, thinking what to do. I decided to walk into the lobby and ask the guard for a box. Well heck he didn't even try to be nice. "You can't bring that cat in here." "I know that, I just wanted to ask if there was a box lying around that I could put it in." "NO." Well minus 10 brownie points for him. How much trouble would it have been for him to call the mailroom or one of the admins to see if there was a box? One of the janitors was standing right outside emptying the trash and he seemed sympathetic, so I asked him if he could watch it for me while I ran to my desk and got my purse. Which he did. So I came back, got the cat, put it in the car and drove home. When I got there, I put the cat in a carrier and tried to call somebody to tell them I was going to miss the 1:00. Couldn't get through, so I called the vet and they said to bring the cat in. I dropped her there and left them my number and went back to work. Where... My meeting had been rescheduled. Oops... Anyway I wasn't back at my desk more than 10 minutes when the vet called. Sadly, the cat is FIV positive. Darn. Darn. Darn. I left a message for CATS, sometimes they adopt out cats that are FIV positive. I expect they're going to tell me NO and I'll have to have the cat put down though. I can't bring her home. There's no vaccine for FIV and I have four other cats. Well that's my good deed with a bad outcome story for the day...