Reply #20: This is my tale of idiots of municipal animal control...

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

Last spring, I'm at work and I get a hysterical call from my mother. Apparently, she just got a call from animal control saying that they had Midnight in custody for the last week and she was going to get put down. I had forgotten to get the cat new tags, so she had my mom's # on her. My mother also wanted to know how my cat could be missing for the last week without me doing anything about it. I told her that I saw her the night before, so at the very worst my roommate let her out late that night or sometime that morning. My mother didn't believe me.

So I call up animal control and they tell me that my cat is at the shelter. I tell them I saw her the night before and there's no way they had her for the last week, but that if she's there, I'm coming to pick her up. They tell me I can't pick her up because there's question over whether or not I really own the cat. You see, when they called my mother's house, they got my senile grandmother who told them I stole her cat and that she wants her cat back. I tell them she's senile and it's my cat. They tell me that I need to furnish adoption papers or vet papers with my name on it for her to me released to me. She was a rescued alley cat and my mother's name is on the vet papers so I need to track down my mother in order to pick up the cat and naturally my mother is "unavailable."

I get in touch with the actual animal shelter to let them know I'm coming to get her as soon as I can. They animal shelter tells me that my cat has now been placed in a foster home. I'm like, "dude, what the fuck?" I ask to be given the number of the new foster mom. They can't give it to me, but if I go down to the shelter, they will call her and I can talk to her.

I head to the animal shelter. They call the "foster mom." She tells me that she never had my cat. Once again, I'm like "dude, what the fuck?" The woman asks me if I'm from the area because she saw that my cat had out-of-town tags. I tell her I just never switched the tags and I tell her that I live in the apartment complex across from the Chinese restaurant. So does she. It turns out that my cat got out a couple times, scored free meals off of her, she wrote down the info on the tag because it was an out-of-town tag, and after she didn't see the cat for awhile, she called up animal control to see if the cat was picked up. She told me that if my cat scored any more meals, she wouldn't worry about it but Midnight was welcome to visit anytime.

I get home and my cat is sleeping on the landing of my steps INSIDE the apartment. Here's a pic of her hanging out on the gecko tank (she likes the heat lamp).