A few years ago, a stray kitten who was on the verge of death wandered up to the front door of my pet supply company’s warehouse. When I say it was on the verge of death, it truly was. To this day I believe it made it to the door because it knew people were there and they would give it some kind of attention. Well, we did.
I took the little guy in, gave him food and water which he desperately needed along with a bath to get rid of the HUNDREDS of fleas who were sucking the life out of him. He then went to the vet for a checkup and shots. He then took up residence in the ladies room until we found a home for him. But in the mean time, we had a problem.
All of us in the office played and held the kitten and all of us came down with ringworm. Our hands, arms, legs, face, ears, were covered with ringworm. So it was with trepidation that when Ed our HR guy called me and said “there’s a stray dog wandering around the parking lot, do you want to go check on him?” I politely said, “No, not this time.”
Well, knowing that I would be haunted by this decision for the rest of my life, I looked out my office window and saw a beautiful basset hound playing with a half-dozen Solid Cactus folks. I was soon to join them. The dog was beautiful! She was only a pup, but pretty big for her size. She was friendly, outgoing and very, very playful. She loved to have her belly rubbed and wanted to get inside the office in the worst way. Knowing that letting her inside could yield a lot of trouble, I did it anyway. She walked up and down the aisles of cubicles greeting everyone with her tail wagging like she belonged here.
While she was wandering around, I started making some phone calls to try to find out who her owner was. Unfortunately, she had no collar on so there was no form of identification. When 5pm rolled around, Molly in our business office, who’s husband is a humane officer for the Luzerne County SPCA, offered to take the dog and get it scanned to if it was microchipped.
Well, today on the way into the office, I noticed “LOST DOG” signs on all the telephone poles near the office. Apparently the dog lived 2 houses down from the office and was a young child’s pet. The owner now has to pay a fee to the SPCA for housing the dog overnight and if it does not have a current dog license, they will face a fine as well.
There is a really big lesson to be learned here and it’s simple – put an id tag and collar on your pet! How hard is it to do that? I won’t even begin to lecture on the bigger issue here, which is letting the dog run loose. Fortunately for the dog and her owners, she is safe and soon will be back into the loving home she wandered away from. I can’t even begin to think about what could have happened to the dog if it managed to get to the busy highway just a block away.
So what happened to the black kitten that gave us ringworm? After a few weeks of R & R, the cat was given a home and is still around. Flea and ringworm free.