Animals Where They Don't Belong

I'm not in the habit of using this blog to repeat stories that get emailed from person to person to persona million times, but this one is a) true, and b) made me laugh out loud when I saw the choppy little animated gif video of it.

Here's the story in full:

A seagull in Scotland has developed the habit of stealing chips from a neighborhood shop. The seagull waits until the shopkeeper isn't looking, and then walks into the store and grabs a snack-size bag of cheese Doritos. Once outside, the bag gets ripped open and shared by other birds. The seagull's shoplifting started early this month when he first swooped into the store in Aberdeen, Scotland, and helped himself to a bag of chips. Since then, he's become a regular. He always takes the same type of chips. Customers have begun paying for the seagull's stolen bags of chips because they think it's so funny.

I had my own misplaced animal story last week. I got a call from Joyce across the street asking if I had a black cat. Unprepared to deal with my forth dead pet in four years, my heart jumped into my throat. But it wasn't bad news.

	Nasty Cat

Joyce continued, "I don't know how he could have gotten down there, but we heard a cat screaming from below the drain grate in the back yard. Bob went to his shop to get a crow bar, and he pried up the grate. We pulled out a nasty cat matted with mud, and once he shook free, he ran over toward your house."

I thanked her, and went out to take a look.

Minutes later, I was peering down the driveway next door, and I saw our cat Wilson approaching a dirty looking gray-black cat. I didn't recognize the cat, and I felt some relief that it wasn't Nigel II after all. Then, it dawned on me that Wilson was approaching as a friend rather than moving in to fight, so it had to be our cat.

I called "Kitty Kitty Kitty," and he trotted toward me. His jiggling belly proved that it was indeed Nigel.

	The bathtub, after his rinsing. I should have pointed the camera higher. In his scrambling, he slung mud as high as my eye level.

The action of picking him up covered me in wet mud. I hurried inside to show off the filthy cat to Mrs. theskinnyonbenny. After that, I turned on the bathtub faucet and held him under lukewarm water while he scrambled and wailed. I kept him under the spigot for as long as I could, which was probably only 10 seconds or so.

(Had this been our third cat Bubbles, I would have been shredded to the point that you would be looking at my mangled stumps over there as pictures of the day.)

He immediately went to eat, looking cleaner, but still rat-like since he was soaked. Soon after that, I saw him grooming, and then he slept for about a day.

He has barely gone outside since.