The Vine: November 11, 2009
Dear Sars:
So I have my first “real job” and suffice it to say, it’s not going well. I’m 26 and have had a wealth of jobs, from retail to reception. But this is my first job where I have an actual position and don’t spend my time answering phones and ordering supplies for others and I think it could be a springboard to something better.
The thing is, it’s a hard job, it’s a small company with only about 10 people and new hires are thrown right in, no introduction, no training, and when I say no training I mean no training. Every day is busy, there isn’t one moment where there is no work to do.
I feel like I mess everything up. I can’t do a single thing without there being some stupid mistake that I should have caught. Forgetting to include a date on a letter, a typo, forgetting to include an important fact, and sometimes big mistakes. I feel like I can’t do one thing without someone I work with pointing out a mistake I made.
The real problem is I don’t recover from these mistakes very well. I beat myself up about them, I’ll spend hours, if not the whole day, in my cubicle freaking out about my mistake and convincing myself that I’m going to get fired and then freaking out more because I cannot afford to get fired, and then, due to the freaking out (internally — I don’t ever say anything out loud) I can’t focus and make more mistakes.
And I can’t talk to my boss about this, he isn’t the pat you on the back and tell you it’ll be ok type of boss, he’s nice, but more like the boss who says, “Life’s a bitch, we’re all busy.”
In terms of the mistakes I know that I just need to take my time and triple-check everything. The real question is how do I stop being so hard on myself? How do I keep one typo from ruining my entire day, how do I just let things go without feeling like I have to punish myself in some way for what amounts to a stupid mistake that was caught before it even became a real mistake, as the only people who saw it were the people I work with?
I just want to be able to actually not care instead of pretending I don’t care while simultaneously making myself sick with worry over nothing.
I do like the job and don’t want to quit, not yet anyway
Dear Like,
It seems like I addressed a very similar question last month.The therapy may or may not come into play for you, but first, you need to understand that your anxiety is heightened because you feel that this job is more significant, and your performance more relevant, than at jobs in the past.It’s probably not something you think about consciously every minute, but it’s pretty much the first thing you thought to tell me in your letter, so clearly it’s an issue.You take it seriously, which is not a bad thing at all in and of itself, so your first task is to acknowledge that that’s a factor, and stop beating yourself up for worrying about your job performance.
The next task is to start compartmentalizing so that you can get through your to-do list without getting stuck in your own head.As I suggested in the previous letter, keep a list of the day’s mistakes.At the end of the day, write a report on them for yourself.The purpose of this is not to castigate yourself further for making mistakes, which we all do a hundred times a day; it’s to take control of the anxiety by looking at patterns in your mistake-making, and identifying strategies for improvement and mistake prevention.
Your list for next Tuesday, for instance, might include all typos, dropped words, and misdialed phone numbers — things you messed up on because you were in a hurry.That suggests a strategy of slowing down, proofreading, double-checking facts, and taking a few extra minutes to get it right the first time.
You should also talk to your boss — but it’s not a conversation where you should seek comfort or compliments.It’s a conversation in which you present a list of functions or tasks that you would have liked some training on, and ask for some help on learning the ropes.You should have the same chat with co-workers who’ve worked there longer than you have; you don’t want sunshine blown up your ass here, you want information on how to do the job better.You probably should have had training, but you didn’t, so you’ll have to train yourself.Do it.Take control of the problem.
Not everyone can just not care about making mistakes at work; it’s not realistic for you to set that as your goal.(And your boss isn’t likely to appreciate an overly laissez-faire attitude towards screw-ups either.)But you can keep it from interfering with your work, by figuring out how to minimize both the mistakes and the time they eat up in your head.View that as part of your job description, and do it each day.
Dear Sars,
I really don’t know what to do about this one. I’m currently studying in China and overwhelmingly the experience has been great, but I’m suddenly completely out of my depth here.
Recently two of my American friends have been having problems with sexual harassment and sexual assault. A couple of our classmates from Tajikistan moved past “creepily over-attentive” to “borderline sexual harassment” to “sexual assault/attempted rape” in a matter of two weeks. I personally haven’t gotten anything past the “creepily over-attentive” stage from them, and I think my “don’t fuck with me” glare and my unwillingness to deal with them once I got the creep vibe from them spared me the worst of it, but I also clearly have a vested interest in seeing that this matter is dealt with.
But…how? We can’t prove anything. My friends are worried that if we tried anything it would just make matters worse. They’re worried since the two or three main guys who have been a problem are within this larger group that if we make any sort of stink about their behavior that they might get violent. I think things are escalating anyway and I’d rather act now than not act and have someone get raped (if that hasn’t already happened). Within the Chinese legal system, I doubt there is very much we could do, especially since we’re leaving in two months, but my inclination is to see if we can get them kicked out of the program.
But again, we can’t prove anything. And since nothing has happened to me directly, I don’t feel like I can go against their wishes not to make a big deal about it. I don’t fear for my personal safety, which might be really stupid, because I don’t have any interaction with them outside of class. My two friends went over to their apartment for dinner, which is where the sexual assault/attempted rape took place, and are participating in the international student volleyball tournament, which is where most of the harassment has continued.
The only person we could really take this to is our resident director, who manages the five American students on campus, and we’re all really close to him, but I don’t know what he might be obligated to do if we report it. I just don’t know what to do. If I ask my parents, they’ll freak out and probably contact the resident director anyway, and my adviser from school, while being an excellent person to get advice from, might have similar obligations to contact someone and start a process that my friends don’t want to happen.
I know there isn’t any good solution for a problem like this, but how do I protect my friends and myself AND not let these pathetic excuses for human beings off the hook?
There is a special hell…
Dear Hell,
Isn’t it possible for one of you to ask the resident director, or the head of the university program, a hypothetical question about how these things get reported and dealt with?Can’t you tell someone in authority that, while you don’t want to name names just now because there’s the possibility of reprisals — and that you guys feel unsafe is on its own probably grounds for the program to look into the situation, at the very least — you wonder what would happen if you reported an ongoing campaign of harassment and an attempted assault for which you have no proof.
I mean, at least get the minimum of information.A significant portion of your stress over the situation is coming from the fact that you don’t know what would happen, or how your creepy classmates would react.
And as to that, well, obviously you and your friends need to avoid them.Sit as far away from them in class as you can manage.Do not spend any social time with them outside of class and do not react to anything they say.Document everything they do.If they take the harassment into the volleyball venue, report it to the organizers and get them barred from the premises.Don’t go anywhere by yourselves; make sure somebody else always knows where you are.Guys like this thrive on the intimidation — basically controlling where you go and what you do because you’re afraid.Once that titillating reaction is no longer on offer, they often move on.
I understand that your friends don’t want to risk it, but if you have any real basis to believe that the larger group could become violent, you need to report that, and at the very least, you need to learn what the policy is on matters of this nature — and to take safety precautions.I do suspect that a stated willingness to dime them to someone in authority will back them down, but if you guys aren’t comfortable with that, you should at least know your options.
Hi Sars!
So it’s a cat question. How long do you have a take care of a stray kitty you took in before you can tell the newly surfaced “owner” that she can’t have him back?
Here’s the story: All summer, there’s been this cat living under my bird feeders. I assumed he belonged to someone, and chased him away. I live in the middle of a mid-sized town, a few blocks from the commercial district, so everyone has a postage-stamp yard and there’s traffic, etc. — not a great place to have an outdoor cat, but for some reason people do.
About five weeks ago, said cat approached me as I got out of my car, which I thought was weird because he had no reason to think I was friendly. He meowed and rubbed against my ankle, and when I went to pet him, I realized I could see every rib. It’s against my policy to feed strays, but he was just so friendly and so sad looking that I gave in and started setting out bowls of kibble, which he devoured twice a day.
A week or so later, the temperature dropped. With nights in the forties, it also began to rain, and became quite raw. After a couple days of this, kitty came to my back door, and cried to come inside. I brought him up to the bathroom till I was sure he used litter okay, and then moved him to a bedroom.
Later that week, I took him to the vet. She agreed he appeared to have been abandoned — although he was neutered and clearly loved people, he had fleas, worms, ear mites, and scratches on his body from fighting something. (Oddly, we have raccoons and groundhogs in our tiny yard.) He got his vaccinations and other medications, and I took him home.
I took a photo, and put flyers in mailboxes for blocks around, as well as on Craig’s List, trying to locate the owner, with no luck. So a friend of mine offered to take him, and I gratefully placed him. (I have two already, and three would be cat overload for my place.) My friend named the cat “Romeo,” as he’s quite the little lover — always begging for a cuddle. My friend has never had a cat before, and has really fallen for the little guy!
Last night, another neighbor emailed me to say she was chatting with neighbors up the street, about seven houses away from me, who think it’s their cat. (How they missed the flyer is a mystery.) A dark part of me wanted to pretend I never got the email, but I got over that and sent back a note explaining the whole situation and asking if she thought the previous owners might agree to let my friend keep Romeo — it’s not right to keep the previous owner worrying, but on the other hand, she was clearly a crappy pet owner and Romeo is so happy now! I’m pretty sure the previous owners will put Romeo back outside to fend for himself again, which isn’t good for him where we live, and also means he’ll be hanging out in my yard again. (The birds he chased away all summer are just now coming back — yay!)
So I think I need to take a walk to the neighbors with a photo and beg to keep the cat if it turns out that he’s hers after all. But here’s my question: What if she says no? We’ve only had him indoors for three weeks now. Putting aside all concerns about the cat, I have spent over $200 on vet bills and another $100 on litterbox, litter, food, and other supplies to set up the cat at my friend’s place, since he was doing me a favor by taking him. Can I point that out? I don’t want to get all judgy with the previous owner, but I need to tell her the cat was in bad shape when I found him. She has a two-year-old and perhaps the cat has simply fallen off her radar in terms of care-giving, but who knows? Maybe she thinks the cat was fine as he was.
I also don’t want to create a lot of drama on the street — we’re all pretty friendly with one another. (These people just moved in last winter, so I don’t know them as well as I know other neighbors.)
Any guidance you or the readers could provide would be tremendously appreciated!
WWSD (What Would Sars Do)
Dear Sars Would Do Nothing,
…Do nothing, for now.You explained what happened to the other neighbor; if the previous owner believes that it’s her cat, she can contact you herself.It’s not as though you snatched the feline off her front porch and placed him with a friend that very day, giving the real owner no chance to find him.The cat had gone off the rez ages before, you got no response to the flyers…I wouldn’t make excuses for her.If your toddler is so high-maintenance that you don’t have time to read your mail and notice a flyer for a lost cat?When…you have lost a cat?Come on.Weeks went by.
I’ve had indoor/outdoor cats, and if you actually give a shit, you notice when they don’t show up for dinner once, so I’d wait for her to contact you.If she does, ask her to describe the cat, and then tell her with as little affect as possible that, yes, that could be her cat — but the cat you found had visible ribs, had clearly mixed it up with other animals, didn’t want to stay outside in the cold, and cost several hundred dollars to vet, feed, and re-home.And then just sit there and do not say another word.See how she reacts.
Nikolai was a somewhat different situation, but if someone had emailed me weeks later all, “I saw the photos on your blog and that’s definitely my cat,” I’d have been like, not anymore he ain’t, dickhead.Do valid excuses for letting this happen to a pet exist?I’m sure they do.Do I really want to hear any of them when the cat has already found a new home?Not particularly.If she really cares about the cat’s welfare, she’ll leave him where he is.
The short version: wait for her to contact you, and if she does, don’t make any promises.Tell her what you just told me, and hope she talks herself out of expecting to get the cat back, when she did nothing in the service of that for weeks on end in the first place.
Tags: cats Nikolai workplace
Like — I am A Worrier, so I really feel your pain. But, a street philosopher once told me “Everyone does at least 3 dumb things each day; wisdom comes from not exceeding this limit”. I’ve taken comfort in the phrase ever since, because it allows me to let myself off the hook for silly mistakes. Sure, I’d heard it before: ‘don’t sweat the small stuff’, etc. But for some reason that particular phrase resonated with me; I hope you can use it too!
Yay stolen pet stories! My cat Kelly used to belong to my douchey ex. He impulse-adopted her when she was ‘on display’ from a shelter at PetCo. After a few months, he decided his allergic reactions were too bad to keep her, and was going to give her BACK to the shelter. The sweetest furball ever. So I took her, and dumped him not long after. During the breakup he tried to take her back from me! Like as punishment for dumping him…? I kept her anyway, and she’s shedding all over my couch at this very moment – 7 years later… :)
My parents were adopted by their neighbors’ cat, a giant orange boy who would use his claws to open their screen door and come walking into the house. My dad, a long standing cat hater, carried Cyrus around and baby-talked to him. When the neighbors decided to move out of state, they told my us they were just going to leave Cyrus behind in the (rural/suburban) neighborhood.(!!!) My dad asked if they could keep him, and they were fine with jettisoning one of the coolest cats ever.
Both of the cats are/were awesome, affectionate and loveable little peeps. The idea that they could be used as breakup leverage or abandoned out of laziness blows my mind. They are LIVING BEINGS, GOD.
@LaSalleUGirl: Really glad I could help. My afternoon took a bit of a turn for the crappy, so your kind words couldn’t have arrived at a better moment. Also: Clichés? Or you’re just in a Shakespearean frame of mind? I know which I’d pick.
I’m sure I’ve read somewhere reputable that reading print on a page really does engage different processes in the brain as compared with reading print on a screen.
My co-worker’s wayward cat found his way home. I don’t know the details because co-worker understandably stayed home to hang out with his reunited kitties, but yay!
@Like:
It’s perfectly normal to stress about a new job, and it’s normal for it to take you time to acclimate to a new position (particularly if it is a new career). That being said, it sounds like you have an anxiety disorder. Therapy is extremely helpful for anxiety, and there are two main methods: medication and cognitive behavioral therapy. CBT has you write down your worries and re-write them to be more logical/rational. This can make a huge difference. Medication can be very helpful, too. For me, it’s been a godsend for my irrational anxiety (significant worrying about what I genuinely understand is not a problem) — most of it disappeared entirely. Good luck with managing this and hopefully improving your quality of life.
I personally haven’t gotten anything past the “creepily over-attentive” stage from them, and I think my “don’t fuck with me” glare and my unwillingness to deal with them once I got the creep vibe from them spared me the worst of it, but I also clearly have a vested interest in seeing that this matter is dealt with.
I know it’s tempting in this situations to fixate on something you can control, but the flip side of “I’m not being harassed because I’m doing something right” is the victim blaming “those girls are being harassed because they’re doing something wrong.”
The reason they’re being harassed is bad luck, period. No behavior of theirs would make a man who is inclined to respect a woman’s refusal turn into a harasser.
Like, I think Sars’s suggestions for helping to control your anxiety at work are all really sound and should be followed. I would say, though, that the type of thing you’re describing isn’t attributable to a lack of training – there isn’t training that will help you to not make typos, for example. It’s all about learning to be calm, taking the time to proof-read things before showing them to your co-workers, etc.
You’re totally right that your responses are disproportionate – as you say, the mistakes have been spotted before the letters have been sent out. However (and I don’t mean this as a way of adding to your stress, so please don’t take it in that way) – I think you’re right to be concerned about making mistakes. You want to be good at what you do and be seen by your boss and co-workers in that light, so you need to get things right. I’m sure you’ll be fine – just remember that most of us get stressed about things every now and then. I’m a bit of a fan of the whole ‘heading to the bathroom to sit quietly with nobody around’ technique when I’m wound up and liable to start performing badly, if that’s any help…
Like – I spent 7 years as a promotions manager, which at my small non-profit, made me copy writer, copy editor and production manager all in one. By the time a piece was ready to go out, I’d already looked at it 700 times. So catching errors could be really difficult, because I knew what it was SUPPOSED to say.
The trick someone taught me was to read it backwards. Start at the end, and read the sentences in reverse, so you see each word as a separate piece, rather than part of a whole – this allows you to check spelling. Then start at the end again, and read each sentence straight through, but in reverse order. This breaks your flow and allows you to focus on the sentence as a single entity (to check for grammar, punctuation, etc).
Stephanie is dead right in her ‘read backwards’ technique. I work for a very big and formal law firm and any mistakes of the ‘oops, word in the wrong place’ variety are not received well. We have a department of proof checkers to polish up external documents, and this is the technique they use.
I’m also a fan of asking other colleagues to read important things for me before I send them out. A fresh pair of eyes will always spot things which you’ve missed.
Thanks for the update, Blue! So glad the kitty’s safe & sound. Yay! (And he took the day off to hang out with the cats…awwww.)
I’ve done my share of obsessing over mistake, and obsessing over potential mistakes due to a lack of experience/knowledge in a new job. part of what gets me through it is telling myself (over and over and over) when the anxiety hits me, to just plunge right in and do it- get past all my worries and just do it, the only way to get better at it is to just do it… because: A) the get-it-done gruffness from my boss isn’t personal, so he will answer questions- I just need to approach him the right way and right away. B) I may well make a mistake the first time I jump into something- and that’s NOT a bad thing. People understand when you’re feeling your way through, but you only get to use that excuse once. make sure it’s a learning experience so you DO know the next time. write down the processes.
Another good proofreading trick: read the letter aloud. Not that you have to shout it out, but just murmur it to yourself at your desk. Actually *hearing* it rather than just reading it in your head will help you spot mistakes 99% of the time. It also makes repetitive use of words very apparent, which is a good thing for me, since that’s not technically wrong and won’t get caught by a spell-check, but will definitely make a letter sound bad. I tend to forget to use synonyms in successive sentences and end up with 3 instances of the same phrase in one paragraph, or 5 sentences in a row that begin with “I.” :)
@Jacq: “I’m a bit of a fan of the whole ‘heading to the bathroom to sit quietly with nobody around’ technique when I’m wound up and liable to start performing badly, if that’s any help…”
Heh, I feel like Elliot from Scrubs: She hides in the supply closet when she breaks down whereas I have a whole system of restrooms I can escape to.
Our 4 cats are all members of my family. (They are my only human child’s siblings)
Ming (the Merciless)- was adopted from my MIL who decided that a kitten is cute, but the family dog didn’t want it.
Carmen (Electra) – we cat sat while a friend went out of town for a week or 3… haven’t heard from her since, but the cat is a WAY better friend than she was…
Flash (Gordan)- a friend’s mom wouldn’t let her keep the cat
(Prince) Aran – was in a box by the mall, abandoned.
the best cats have come to us (through non-trad means), and the only one I would have given back was Carmen… but not after the 2 month mark… Then, he was fambly.
Same for your cat, Romeo is now fambly
Hell – I have to reiterate, please please please tell EVERYONE and ANYONE associated with your program. I work with a study abroad provider and it’s incredibly frustrating to learn after the fact that a student had a problem but didn’t tell us about it. There may not be anything legally that the advisor can do, but he definitely wants to know that something is going on. Whether your friends are willing to speak up or not, you should absolutely tell your resident director what’s been happening.
If your resident director doesn’t 1. take you seriously, 2. take steps to contact the harassers, and 3. find out what action you want to take, make sure he knows that you will be telling your friends back in the U.S. not to study on his program. Study abroad programs live and die on student services, and if the director isn’t responding appropriately, you should tell everyone you know.
@ Hell
I agree with Cora- tell someone about the actions of the Tajik students. If your Study abroad program is at a Chinese university, go talk to the Waiban (the foreign students office). take your resident director if necessary/preferred. They deal with all the foreign students on campus, help get visas, and know more about Chinese law. It is important that they know what is happening on their campus. I taught English at a Chinese University, and the Waiban was my first and best resource.
Also, definitely emphasize the embarrassment this will cause them . Tell them you will have to tell your home university about the treatment you received and warn others not to come. They will be very concerned about saving face, and about keeping the relationship.
No, there is no excuse. I have indoor/outdoor cats too, and believe me they know where to come when they are hungry. Also, they do not fend for themselves – they sleep inside every night. They do not beg neighbors for food and affection and a place to stay! They are taken to the vet if it seems there is anything wrong with them. Leaving a cat outdoors to find it’s own food and shelter is not owning a cat. That cat should in no way go back to those owners, and I have a feeling if you handed them the vet and food bills they would not even want him back.
Like: When I first started work “for real”, I was an anxious bag of nerves as well. I beat myself up over the stupidest little mistakes, and stressed over being fired or let go all the time. The fact that I also proceeded to get laid off twice in the period of two years (bad economic times, not due to anything I actually did) didn’t help matters, and I eventually got worse. I started to think that every bathroom or coffee break I took was being held against me.
I’ve since learned that in reality, no one cares about the small stuff. So long as you take the time to learn from little mistakes and try not to make the same ones over and over, all anyone cares about at the end of the day is that your work attitude/ethic is good, and you get your work done on time. To help you cope, Sars’ advice is good, but I would add that the minute you feel your brain start down the negative stressing road, immediately road block it by either saying out loud or thinking really hard the word “STOP!” (I lightly punch my thigh) then shifting your thinking to something else. If it starts again, then do it again. It takes a while, and you’ll be saying “STOP” a lot for the first little while (I averaged 5 every 30 minutes for the first day), but as you keep going, it gets less and less.
As for addressing the “no training” problem. I didn’t get any either, really. I countered that by asking LOTS of questions. As soon as I came across something I didn’t know about, and couldn’t figure out the answer to in 15 minutes, I’d get up and ask someone who did. If you’re worried about “pestering” people, write down a number of questions, and then bring them to someone all at once. At the very least, your superiors will see your willingness to learn and assertiveness, and hopefully that will translate into a good job progress review later on. Little tip: write down the answers and any other little tips you get in a notebook and ensure that you don’t ask the same question twice within a short time period.
Hope that helps!
I am coming to this late, but as to making mistakes … yeah. I heartily endorse all the advice about proofreading and so forth but to me, this reads like a more fundamental panic over losing your job. You are SO convinced that you’d be SO screwed if you lost your job that you think about it ALL THE TIME, and every tiny thing sets you off. (I speak here as a chronic, awful worrier.)
But honestly, there’s no point in agonizing about how difficult a situation is (such as getting fired) when you are not in it. This is the worrier’s mindset, I am convinced: there is a loop where you fixate on a problem, you think of a solution, but you can’t actually attempt the solution yet, so you return to fretting over the problem. When the entire reason you can’t address the problem is that YOU DON’T HAVE IT YET.
It would go, for instance, thusly: “What if I lose my job? What problems would that cause? Well, in that hypothetical universe, I’m broke, I’m embarrassed, I have to start over OH MY GOD, WHAT WILL I DO? Okay, look for another job! Um, borrow money! Um, go back to school! But I can’t do any of these things right now, because I still have a job! I can’t do anything! Oh my God, what if I lose my job?”
See what I mean? You can’t move productively to problem-solving, because you don’t even have the problem. If you actually LOST your job, you would go out and get another one. Or go back to school. You would figure out something. It’s what people do. But because you HAVEN’T been fired, you can do nothing, so you feel powerless and worry more. This is why I, for one, worry the most about things that haven’t happened, not things that have.
This was a painful column to read, and I’ve had to read it in bits and pieces. I’ve spent my entire adult life rescuing the cats (and resultant kittens) that were discarded by other people. My 401K retirement fund? It says “meow.” I know I’m not the only person who rescues the lost and abandoned, not by a long chalk – and thank God for that.
You know what? The first time you take a cat to the vet’s, it’s YOURS. I’m controlling myself, trying to keep from saying from the FIRST BOWL OF FOOD – because some cats, the healthy ones who have a circuit and a home and who stop by for a visit and a nosh, THEY’LL decide if they’re yours. But that skinny starveling who looks at you so hopefully? YOURS, from the first bowl. If you don’t get a responsible, sobbing “Thank God you found him/her, what do I owe you?” from the original owner when you put up a poster, you don’t have to give that cat back to ANYONE. I’ve driven hundreds of miles with a cat that peed on my lap (left by the housesitter of my ex’s EX), I’ve walked into houses that had cats left behind with no food.
You find a cat and care for it, and you have a funny feeling about returning it to that “neighbor” down the street who’s all … oh, yeah, that’s my cat, s/he’s an outdoor cat …? That’s YOUR cat. No need to be nasty, just make sure you’re paid FIRST for the vet bills, the food bills, the pet supplies and litter before you turn that cat over – and there won’t be any fuss, because anyone who cared enough to pay for that care in the FIRST place wouldn’t have left a living creature outdoors to suffer.
Laura, I hope your kitty comes home safe. Second best, I hope your kitty has a new home. They DO get out, even when they shouldn’t. It happens to all of us.
Adlib, I’m sorry. I know how you feel. Not all rescues and placements go well, either. You just … you do the best you can at the time, you know? And maybe you make a different decision at another time. You do the best you can do. :(
Linda: Whew! Good. Happy endings. I feel better than I did. Happy kitty – LUCKY kitty!
“But that skinny starveling who looks at you so hopefully? YOURS, from the first bowl.”
I think this is an exaggeration. As Sarah pointed out, even conscientious cat owners lose track of outdoor cats, and sometimes, they don’t come back for a while, and sometimes they are not great at caring for themselves, and when you see them, they may be skinny. My family had the occasional cat that would do exactly this — wander off, defy efforts to get him back, and later come home, on his own, as they often do — none the worse for wear, but skinny, which is why he came home.
I have absolutely no sympathy for the pet owners in this particular story who, as Sarah pointed out, don’t seem to have cared.
But as nice as it is of you to offer the bowl of kibble, if you claim ownership of someone else’s pet simply because it was hungry when you found it, I think that’s too far. And if you tell me, “I’m sorry, but your cat came over to my house on his ‘circuit’ to grab a ‘nosh,’ and he has decided he’s mine now,” I will knock you down and take my cat back, I promise you.
I have no idea who originally owned my kitty, but she has been mine since my husband climbed on the roof to hand her to me through the open window.
For most of last winter, my in-laws saw a cat roaming around their house; tiny, skinny little tortie girl that ran as soon as you approached her, but came back and scarfed the gooshy tuna we gave her as soon as we left. At some point she got an injury on her tail that my husband couldn’t catch her to treat her for, and disappeared. We worried that she’d gotten killed by a racoon or something.
Last March, she started coming back more frequently, the wound on her tail still open and occasionally bleeding. But when she started showing up daily for tasty leftovers, and actually consented to let us pet her after a feeding, we started debating adopting her. My allergies were the only thing stopping us.
Finally, one evening, the kitty decided to climb our roof and meow at the second story window — where my husband and I live. So the hubby climbed onto the roof, and we put her in the bathroom for a night. (The hubby snuck out for kitty litter so the in-laws wouldn’t notice, as they already have a dog. Somehow, saying “YOU SAW NOTHINK!” qualifies as keeping it a secret.) She was ours after the first night.
We vetted her, fixed her, got rid of her worms, bandaged her tail, and fed her. She’s now twice the size she was originally, and Sierra is a happy, spastic, toe-attacking member of the family. She still has a bald spot where that injury was, but the tail still works as it should, and she has a nice comb-over going. :3
If she was owned by anyone, she’s our kitty now. Yay for being adopted by kitties! :D
Linda, you are obviously not the kind of cat owner to whom I was referring – you’re one of the ones who’d be looking for your cat. You’re one of the ones who’d have no problem reimbursing a temporary caretaker for food, vet bills, whatever. I’m not saying “no good pet owner’s cat escapes and goes hungry” – look at all of us who’ve said it’s happened to our pets.
That said, it’s better to feed that hungry cat than not, on the chance it WON’T get food somewhere else. If you feed it, maybe it will find its way home. Maybe it will find its home with you. I’ve had cats that “belonged” to neighbors move in with me – since they weren’t get food, shelter, medical attention, or any other kind of interaction. I’ve had a cat move out on ME – his original owner had been a little boy, whose mother decided to keep the dog, but get rid of the cat. That cat (an indoor/outdoor cat in a secluded dead-end street) subsequently found himself a new family to visit – it had a little boy and a dog. The boy’s parents talked to me when they were going to move away, and I said yes, he could go with them – he was obviously happier there. I’ve opened up my door and had a never-before-seen pregnant stray run into my house. The truth is, sometimes the cats DO decide for themselves.
What I am saying is that you do not necessarily have the right to apply your idea of cat self-determination to other people’s pets. If you are of the opinion that my cat has “decided” to live with you and I am of the opinion that my cat wandered into your yard and ran into your house when you opened the door out of curiosity and cat-dom, then I will remove my cat from your home by whatever means are required, should you decide you are keeping my pet because you have decided my pet prefers your home to mine.
You can make whatever decisions you think are appropriate in the interests of helping cats, and you should expect other cat owners to do the same. All I’m saying is what I said: I think your impassioned statements on just how quickly a hungry cat becomes YOURS as a result of coughing up one bowl of food (even if someone else has cared for it for years) are exaggerated. If I were looking for my cat and some self-appointed cat ethicist told me, “I found your cat as a skinny starveling, and it is my understanding that he is mine from the first bowl”? All I’m saying is: that person should expect problems.