Pawprint

Pawprint

Not a photo of my cats today but evidence of one of my neighbor cats, just a perfect pawprint frozen in the ice on one of my steps. The fact it’s frozen into this ice means the cat was outside walking around during the rain-sleet-snowfall overnight when the wintry mix turned slushy on every surface, thickened enough to hold the shape of anything impressed into it, and then quickly froze. The poor kitty’s paws.

My cats are lucky, but many cats are not. This may be one of the cats who has a home somewhere in the neighborhood, or it may be one of the cats who I know was left behind when someone moved out at the end of last month, or the month before or even earlier. I see them all the time around the neighborhood and often they end up in my yard, the little refugees from households who decided the cat didn’t belong anymore. It happens all too often and while I try to give people the benefit of the doubt—the cat got out while they were moving, perhaps, or it got out and got lost, no one knows where to look—I know that’s usually not the case.

There are better alternatives to this.