I wrote this one from Saturday when I picked her up at her finder’s house.

“The Final Goodbye”

I watched from the street as the man in the front window lifted what would become my precious cargo off of the cat tree and into his arms. I had brought a pet carrier with me for this exact purpose but he opened the front door of his house and carried the cat out to my car in his arms, like a baby.

Tigress was worse off than the photos online let on. Missing fur and most, maybe all, of her teeth, her eyes and nose watered, obvious signs of an infection. She sneezed and discharge shot from her ears.

“She has been coming around for two years,” the man said, still holding the cat in his arms. He did not want to let her go but he knew he had to. This could be her only chance at a healthy, stable life and waiting any longer might end up costing her that life.

She did not want to go with me, this unfamiliar, bearded stranger, either.

As the man placed her into the crate in the backseat of my car, she tried to get away but the man quickly closed the door of the crate, sealing her fate. She cried out, the only sound she would make on the three-hour journey to her new, temporary home.

It was a heartbreaking scene, on a quiet, residential street in the middle of a small, rural Michigan town, a few miles from the Indiana state line.

The man extended his hand. “Thank you,” he said.