Sometimes there's just nothing you can do...

[ingysledge]

Driving down Antill Street, we see a truck with its hazard lights on. I slow down to avoid it, and see that it’s avoiding a cat on the road. It was a very pretty cat, ginger-type pattern, but in a lovely light honey colour. Said cat was trying to lie down. The truck had gotten out of the way and driven on. I beeped the horn to try and scare the cat off the road and it barely responded. Worried that it had been hit by a car (or possibly the truck with the hazard lights), Mark got out of the car to get that cat off the road. It squarked when he tried to pick it up, and ran/staggered off the road, looking like it was drunk. We pulled over, and followed the cat to where it was lying down, some 30 metres away from the road at the edge of a construction site. It was panting heavily, and its eyes were very wide. It was also bleeding from the mouth. Mark made a sling of his jumper and we carefully carried it back to the car to take it to a vet. After discovering that the vet on the Barton Highway doesn’t have an after hours clinic we rang my parents (we were on the way to have dinner with them), who said there was a vet in Braddon. As we drove, the cat, obviously distressed crawled off Mark’s lap and into the footwell where it lay, panting. Driving down Northbourne and Mark says “I think it’s stopped breathing.” We get to the vet and they let us in. We lie the cat on the table, and they check it for a microchip - it doesn’t have a collar. No heartbeat either. The cat is dead.

I don’t know who’s cat it was. If I did I would tell them what happened. I hate to think that there’s someone out there, wondering why their companion hasn’t come home.

Rest in peace, cat. Know that you spent your last moments with people who cared.