Two Men Refused to Return a Little Girl's Lost Kitten Until She Paid Ransom
This is horrible.
Most pet owners would do just about anything for their sweet animals. Sadly, two men recently took advantage of one family's devotion to their cat.
The two twenty-something men near Albuquerque, New Mexico, demanded money in exchange for a lost kitten they found, NBC New York reports. They contacted the kitten's owners and said they would keep the cat if they weren't paid $50.
The kitten, named Lefty, belonged to an 11-year-old girl who was very upset after her pet escaped. She put up hand-written posters around her neighborhood that read, "lost kitten ... she is sick, needs her medicine, please call." The two men contacted the girl's mother, who spoke about the incident anonymously in order to protect her family.
"Your cat was in very bad condition, it looks malnourished, and has a severe cold but is getting better," one man wrote in a text message. "I had to buy her food and kitty medicine. In order for me to release the kitty I will need a payment of $50. At the least $50 or I can just keep the cat. I have multiple pets and she's in good hands. Are we at an agreement?"
The mother agreed to pay the money, but was very upset about the arrangement. While the men said they took care of the kitten, this mom thinks it was just an excuse to demand payment. "I just don't feel like it was fair," she said. "I don't feel like an adult should do that to a child."
Your collective inability to acknowledge this obvious truth makes you all look like fools.
If the guys who found the cat had to give it medicine, there would have been a vet visit involved, and they would have been out of pocket more than $50. I suspect the mother was noncommittal about reimbursing them and they got ticked off, which I would have been as well.
"Hang on while I log in to the James Webb telescope to search the known universe for who the fuck asked you." -- James Fell
I have to say I agree with Scooter. They should have provided the receipts perhaps, but if they'd not kept them because they thought the cat was stray, that's understandable. A small bag of good quality cat food can run from $12-25 or more, depending on the brand/size they purchased. If they took the kitten to a veterinarian, that's easily $20-60 for an office visit, depending on rates which vary widely. Plus medicine.
Adopting a cat from most shelters costs more than $50 to defray veterinary and other care costs, and those costs are annual if you take good care of your pets.
What was a sick cat doing outside, anyway? All pet cats should live indoors, with only confined outdoor access, like a kitty run/pen or walked on leash, which is easy to teach a kitten - to protect them from accident/disease/predation and to protect small mammals from them.
eta: Sounds like a helicopter mom defending her special snowflake from the consequences of her irresponsibility re: her pet kitten.
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
~ Carl Sagan
If I were to react to what I think really happened instead of what is reported the article, my response would have been much different. Instead I chose to respond to the mood of the opening post of this thread as presented by dale.
Not everything needs to be dissected and inspected. Sometimes people respond to the spirit of an article rather than trying to figure out whether or not it's an accurate report.
Compared to the absolute certainty that the world will end on Wednesday if Trump is elected, this thread is a nice diversion and doesn't require a microanalysis by the nitpicking anal-izers among us.
Last edited by Joe Guy on Mon Nov 07, 2016 7:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.
The article does say the cat "escaped", so we don't have to judge the girl and mom on that. And the finders did communicate with the mother, presumably an adult, so the mom's statement that a child should not be dealt with this way is inapt. It is easy to say that I would be happy to return the cat to its prior home and not worry about any out of pocket, and just see if they offer to reimburse, but "reading between the lines" it looks like the finders are concerned the cat is not being well taken care of and they would like the mom to pay for the care they provided to show they are serious about the cat (the same reason that people are advised to charge for their adoptions and not just give them away).
Joe Guy wrote:
Not everything needs to be dissected and inspected. Sometimes people respond to the spirit of an article rather than trying to figure out whether or not it's an accurate report.
Yes, there are posters that let their OCD get the best of them.
Your collective inability to acknowledge this obvious truth makes you all look like fools.
wesw wrote:you don t have to go to the vet to buy medicine for your pets.
And how would you know what medicine a sick cat needs without taking it to a vet to get a diagnosis? Perhaps you are irresponsible enough to use the trial and error method on someone else's pet, but you don't get to assume that others are.
dales wrote:Don't be little yourself, scoots.
Ah, the "I know you are, but what I am I" retort of the fifth grader set.
Good boy, you're dismissed.
"Hang on while I log in to the James Webb telescope to search the known universe for who the fuck asked you." -- James Fell
