Category Archives: small town USA

Baby Wins the Internet this Month

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Sometimes the Internet gets it right. Watch this, y’all.

This is Baby. She was owner surrendered at age 18 to our local shelter. Amy, an independent cat rescuer, sent a picture of her out on FB and asked for help. Appalachian Feline Friends (the rescue I work with) said to pull her the next day and we’d take her. All accomplished with ease and grace.

The next day, Erin from AFF posted in a closed cat group online that while she understood sometimes cat parents had no good choices, she was incensed at Baby being taken to the shelter so late in life. Several people agreed.*

One of those who agreed was a lady named Laura, who used to live in this area but since moved to Raleigh, NC. Laura got on her own FB timeline and shared a video of Baby exploring her temporary digs at our bookstore, and again railed against an 18-year-old cat ending up at a shelter.

Meanwhile, Appalachian Feline Friends posted Baby’s video and attracted the attention of the lovely Jeff and Christina, also residents of Raleigh. Christina and Jeff adore eldercats and had just lost two of their own. They messaged to ask about Baby, and within the week AFF volunteer Maria Jane was meeting Christina in Boone to deliver Baby to her new furrever home.

All very nice, but wait for the denouement. Laura had meanwhile decided she was going to tell friends of hers about Baby, since they had recently lost their cats. She showed up at Christina and Jeff’s for a pre-arranged dinner, sat down on the sofa and started to tell the story….

….and Baby sauntered past.

Recognizing her from the video, Laura sat, mouth agape, as Christina said, “Go on, what cat?”

By the time the friends had sorted out what happened, Baby had walked back through, given Laura the once-over, and declared she could stay. It’s Baby’s house now. Here she is with a food flight, sampling so Christina and Jeff can record her preferences. Her new housekeeping staff are eager to make sure Baby’s final years are golden ones.

*The lady who surrendered Baby has been in touch to scream about the family getting dragged through the mud on Facebook. I don’t think that happened, but if it did, AFF didn’t do it. Actions have consequences. We recognize that sometimes people can’t help the tough choices they have to make and we’ve seen too much of poverty mixed with love to ever judge someone for that. We’ve also seen plenty of times when someone chose convenience over caring and then got embarrassed for it. We’re not saying which one this looks like, just saying Baby won the Internet this month.

– – You don’t know what you’ve got ’til – –

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Jack’s Wednesday guest blog post –

I consider myself lucky for having had a comfortable and relatively untroubled life. A happy childhood unmarred by any obvious parental disputes, although I’m sure there were some. An adolescence troubled by the usual small matters of growing into oneself and not getting anyone pregnant, but nothing more.

Wendy’s latest book ‘Fall or Fly’ is about fostering and adoption in Appalachia and got me to thinking about the contrast between my life, growing up, and the stories she unearthed during her many interviews that informed the final draft. As usual I was her initial ‘reviewer’ and I have to admit I was by turns shocked and inspired.

There’s a real problem around here with prescription drugs and that’s mainly down to one company that makes a painkiller they swore wasn’t habit-forming but is now proven so. It is also widely available both above and below the counter. Big profits for them of course – – –

I never had any exposure to drugs growing up and never had any interest in them. Once I tried marijuana but it had no effect whatsoever. I even listened carefully to the lyrics of ‘Mellow Yellow’ and like many others tried everything with bananas—which I loathed then and loath now–to no effect!

So, I think of myself as one of these balls that drops down through a game machine and just keeps going in the right direction, although I’ve little doubt there’s always the equal chance it can go the other way (I once studied probability factors).

I’m telling you this on behalf of the young people we come across who haven’t been as lucky as me or maybe even you. One of them is close to breaking my heart right now, and I don’t know if I can do anything for the child.

So, what can I say? This lovely young person, so intelligent, so competent, so lost. What to do, how to help, where the line between enabling and assistance?

Who to blame for taking away what never got used? The drug companies, the high school seller, the “friend” at the party who said, “C’mon, just try it?”

What to say, what to do? With other friends, we make sure the Temporarily Misplaced Youth has enough to eat, and eventually the wherewithal to see through the fog to the Light. And we pray, and we wait and, perhaps, sometimes, we weep.