Causing Hiss-terics
So, I read this story, and it reminded me of one as well.
I was working for a Super-Target, and a kid, who was probably between fourteen and sixteen, came up and bought a couple of cans of cat food.
I didn’t think anything more about it at first. She came back again and bought some Churu (cat treats) and a cat teaser wand. I tried to make some conversation.
Me: “Buying stuff for your cat?”
Kid: “No.”
Me: “Oh. Okay. Um… whose cat are you buying these for?”
The kid gave me a really intense look, confirming that I was still visibly under nineteen myself, then whispered:
Kid: “Meet me in the parking lot out back, by the dumpsters.”
Well, with an invitation like that, I decided to call in a replacement and take one of my mandatory breaks a bit early.
There she was, standing on an upturned shopping cart, leaning over into one of the dumpsters.
Me: *Shouting.* “Jesus! Don’t do that, kid, that’s dangerous!”
She turned around, and I saw she had a kitten in her arm, and she was feeding it a Churu. She used the flap for the child-seat part of the cart and neatly tipped the kitten into the upside-down cart.
That’s when I noticed the mama cat attacking the cat teaser that had been taped to some sort of spinning thing. She took a break from her battering at the toy to grab the kitten and shove it under her. She hissed and went back to attacking the toy.
She’d trapped a mama cat under an upturned shopping cart somehow, and was using the Churu and cat teaser to get the kittens out of the dumpster and under the shopping cart with their mama without getting attacked by the mama.
Now, on the one hand, I was impressed by her inventiveness. On the other hand, I did not particularly want this kid to get hurt, and despite her skill and inventiveness, this was dangerous.
So, after bald-facedly promising her I wouldn’t share her secret with anyone, I went inside and called animal control. Yeah, I’m a jerk.
Animal control found her still with the cat and called her mom. Her mom showed up at Target and asked my manager:
Mom: “So… I got a call that Mindy found another cat? Can you show me where she’s at?”
And he was going from cashier to cashier to ask all of us if we knew what the woman was talking about.
I don’t know what happened to Mindy and her cat, but I do know that next time Mindy was in the store, she saw me in my checkout line and made an obvious and clear choice to avoid my line. Poor kid. I feel a bit guilty about revealing her secret cat, but someone needed to be the adult in the room.
