I woke up and arose when several strangers walked into the room where I was being kept. Strangers are nice enough, but they can be so fickle at times. As usual, the strangers immediately walked past the three black cats in cages next to me and went straight to my cage. They opened it and held me. I used the first opportunity I had to extend my limbs and escape their grasp. Strangely, the visitors were surprised that I wanted to roam around the floor after being trapped in the same cage all day. As I played with many of the toys lying around the floor, I recalled the days when I was able to play with toys at any time I wanted to.
I had started out in a normal home like any other domesticated feline. The humans that fed me always gave me generous amounts of food. The younger humans also played with me on a regular basis, which gave me great exercise and kept me entertained. While I lived with this family for as early as I can remember, this would not be my last family. Eventually these humans were forced to move away to another place where they said that they could not take me. As a result, they found me another home.
This home was not as kind. There were no children in the household to play with me. The owners had no toys to keep me entertained. And to make matters worse, I was only fed on an irregular basis. Some weekends I would find myself quite hungry due to the lack of food in the food bowl. After spending a solid year in this household, an event occurred that I am quite ambivalent about. I woke up and the family was missing. Not only that, but all of their possessions were gone too. They completely vacated the house. With my future uncertain at this location, I immediately left out of fear. I was unsure about what I should do. How would I get food? How would I get shelter?
I spent a few tumultuous days roaming the streets, incapable of finding a stable place to exist. I roamed the streets of Austin looking for bits and pieces of scraps of food to eat. While this was enough to keep me alive, it was a bare life, at best. My diet was incredibly unhealthy, and I began smelling quite foul due to my lack of a bath. Eventually, some adults found me and took me to a place called Austin Pets Alive.
This is basically the story of how I arrived here, being held by a few humans who clearly do not have very much experience holding cats of their own. Since my arrival at Austin Pets Alive, I have been given the name Blanco for my white coat. Most of the other cats at this institution have dark, black coats. For some reason, all of the visitors that come into APA head straight for my cage. It was the same when we had another white cat in the room, for some reason the humans were attracted to cats with white fur before they paid attention to the darker cats. Why do the humans think that white cats are more beautiful? Although this might be a subconscious desire, it is nevertheless unfair. I can’t help but feel ambivalent about receiving more attention but still knowing that many of my friends in the APA will live the rest of their lives here.
However, this privilege that I possess is relative. Regardless of the attention, I am still stuck inside of this cage like all of the other cats. Many of the workers here have mentioned that enough attention has been paid to me that It is likely I will find a foster home within a week. Yet, my future is uncertain. Many of the homes that other cats have come from homes where they were physically mistreated and abused. I myself have suffered malnutrition due to my previous home. Ultimately, only time will tell if this future home will be a place of safety or a new cage that I will long to escape from as well.
While I can only speculate about the past life of Blanco, I know for certain the impact that my encounter with him had upon me. I was initially nervous when I first decided to visit APA. This is not because of a fear of Austin public transportation. But rather, because I had never attended an animal shelter before and was warned by my mother about the dangers of contagious animals. “They could be diseased. Don’t touch them, you might get rabies.” Obviously these fears were dispelled by the friendly reminders from APA staff that the animals at Austin Pets Alive do not have any contagious diseases.
I began by looking at the cats in the cat building at the Manchaca location. The workers at the location directed us to a room where the cats were kept. The room was a little messy, and the cages that the cats were kept within were quite cramped. Moreover, as I entered the room, all of the cats’ eyes immediately turned to me. Their facial expressions made it clear that they were longing for attention. As a result, I could not help opening each of the cats’ cages individually and spending a substantial amount of time with each one. I was moved by what seemed to be a great amount of appreciation and gratitude that was communicated to me merely as a result of me showing attention to the cats. This is something that I realized that I take for granted in my daily life, the ability to be listened and loved by people around me on a daily basis.
Blanco was an especially affectionate cat. Many of the other cats were somewhat irritable, and understandably so. However, Blanco seemed extremely peaceful lying in my lap and being held in my arms. As I watched Blanco play with the toys in the room happily, I understood the importance of the biography that I would write for him. In my hands I held the power to influence whether or not Blanco would ever have the opportunity to live in a household where he is able to play with toys like this on a daily basis. I immediately began taking notes about the unique characteristics that made Blanco unique in order to try to improve the biography that I would eventually write.
After visiting the cats, I proceeded to go outside and visit the dogs. I visited many of the dogs’ cages, and I noticed a somewhat similar response to my foreign presence. Each of the dogs was clamoring for my attention. When the worker at APA unlocked the cage of a dog that I was going to walk, all of the other dogs would bark vigorously, seemingly demanding to be given attention themselves. It was difficult to walk very many dogs, but I had time to walk a few. One of the dogs that I walked was particularly old and sick, and barely walked much on his own. It reminded me of the only pet that I have ever owned in his later years, a dog named Munchy that my family had when I was in elementary school. This was a dog that my parents took in when they found her living in the junkyard next to their house when they were in graduate school. I had never given much thought to their act of taking a random stray dog into their home. But as I saw many dogs wishing to have the same opportunity, I felt both a feeling of admiration for my parents but also a feeling of dissatisfaction that many dogs would never encounter such a friendly home themselves.
As I rode the bus back to campus, I reflected on my visit in the context of a discussion that we had in class. Professor Bump challenged us to prove that animals could talk. But in a way, I felt that all of the animals at the Austin Pets Alive shelter were communicating with me every second that I interacted with them. Many of them visibly felt pain and despair. Many of them had hopeless looks on their eyes. If only the rest of the world could hear these animals’ cries too.
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