Cat rescue
Last Monday, Woody drove to a rest area on 95 in Connecticut and met his youngest brother Danny with their mother’s cat, Lady, who was in danger of being put down if not removed from the facility where Mrs. Wood is a resident. She was about to be evicted from the facility if she didn’t get rid of the cat. She doesn’t clean the litter box and has been leaving her door open so the cat can run around the facility. It’s been an ongoing problem for two years and we’ve tried to solve it twice before but each time, after Woody's mother to ask for our help, and after I had spent two days finding a no-kill shelter that would take Lady, Lucille called up screaming that we were trying to steal her cat. I worked it all out again for the third time. I found a rest area on 95 that was about two thirds of the way to where Woody could meet Danny, his wife Linda and the cat, that would offer a very quick turnaround for both Woody coming from the east and Danny coming from westward. I must have made well over 100 phone calls and about as many emails, but I think we have solved the problem.
Then Lady went to my vet to get shots, be checked over. She is a white cat with markings on her face, currently quite overweight. She had a sweet and friendly disposition before being carried away for 8 hours in a carrier and then poked and prodded and injected by my vet. They said she was actually very compliant and although upset, never hissed or scratched or bit.
Wednesday we took her to CASAS, a small no-kill shelter in Provincetown. She is in her own room for now with her old bed, her toys and everything she needs. Women on the stuff assured me they are used to overweight cats who need extra attention and although the vet thought she was unadoptable, they did not think so. She ‘s pretty and sweet and they thought someone might well want her after she settles in.
Friday we went off to Providence as I was to be a keynote poet in the first Providence Book Festival. It had been very difficult to communicate with them and get straight answers about what they wanted me to do. Just a day before we left, I received an email asking me to be on a panel that would have required preparation. I declined. I was already scheduled for two events. It turned out they had 8 keynote speakers, all of whom were supposed to read for 20 minutes after rubber chicken. I asked to be on first as 8 is just way too many. Afterward the endless program, we retired. Something woke me at 3:30 a.m. just in time to see the power go out. It was completely dark and looking at the window, we could see that this sector of Providence had lost power. We stumbled around in the dark, using the light on our phones. You’d be surprised how difficult it is to dress in complete darkness. No moon, no stars. We checked the hall carefully to see if there was a fire. Woody found on his phone that there was indeed an isolated power outage. We lay in bed trying to figure out how we would get out of our room. I don’t see well in dim light and we didn’t even have that. Finally around 5:45, the power came back on. The festival had about 50 events going on, but since none of us had our schedule till just before we arrived and couldn’t do any publicity. They seemed to have done little and each writer bringing in their fans, there were few people to go around.