I was told that the guard was on leave today, so I quickly texted him to ask if he had assigned anyone to feed Kelly. He had not, so I quickly went down to the guardhouse.
There was another guard on duty but he had no interest in looking after Kelly at all.
The moment I reached, Kelly came out from the VIP’s house to greet me. She’s such a good cat.
I quickly fed her and she was hungry!
Then I saw something strange on the ground. Viewer discretion below: It is a dead bird.
There was a dead bird in an opened can food. I quickly took a photo and asked the guard who is on leave what this is. He didn’t know, and said he would ask the other guard from another road. So I told him to let that guard know that he is not to feed Kelly with found dead animals (burung atau tikus). The reason is that we don’t know how the (dead) animal had died, what if it had ingested poison? Then Kelly would be eating poison too. It’s so dangerous. I managed to get the message across.
Shortly after that, the other guard came and explained the situation. Apparently, someone had earlier donated a pack of freeze-dried quails (I later saw the packet), so this dead bird is a dried quail from the packet.
Oh, okay then, the mystery is solved. But I told him not to mix the freeze-dried quail with her canned food or any other food. The guard said Kelly sometimes ate these dried quails too. That’s fine if it comes from a packet. But now that Kelly has not eaten from this can, it’s best to throw it all away. Sigh, that’s one can of good food wasted. Also one dried quail wasted.
Meanwhile, Kelly was still busy enjoying her late breakfast.
I changed her water with the new bowl I had bought yesterday and informed the guard not to use the mossy plastic container anymore.
After eating, Kelly went to my car as though she wanted to follow me home. I actually had half a mind to take her home for the day and bring her back to the other guard tomorrow, but decided not to. She might not be comfortable again and might withhold her urine again. We cannot risk that happening.
She’s so friendly.
Just now, we passed by and noticed that the VIP house was having an open house celebration. I did not see Kelly anywhere. What if one of the visitors took a liking to her and decided to adopt her? Well, these are matters beyond our control for street animals. We can only wish them all the best as we are not there all the time to look after them.
Meanwhile, I’ve already asked a neighbour to post a message to my neighbourhood chat group (from which I had exited) to inform everyone that “the calico cat at the guardhouse” has been neutered and that she won’t breed anymore, etc. I hope the neighbours will just let her be.
We can only hope.
In trying to help street animals, we come up against objections from the majority of humans who aren’t sympathetic to their plight. Try as I did for the last 14-15 years, I can’t say I have achieved much success. Even my pleas about fireworks incurred a neighbour’s wrath. This is why I left the chat group.
Sometimes, we have to know that we have done our best and it’s time to just do things on our own and overcome the challenges as they arise.
Leave a Reply