One regret that doesn't go away

 ///// and that's all Spotty has to say.  

The cats are enjoying the attention.  

Even though I did everything right in the next story I still feel like I did something wrong.  

I found Baby Girl the First in a trash can one night when I was running in my neighborhood.  I would basically run a one mile loop however many times I needed.  I was training for the half marathon.  So I got up to a 13 mile run before the actual race.  It would take a while.  

I'd see Bubba when he lived with his first owner, a lady with a hummingbird feeder who took the feeder and left poor Bubba to starve.  We took him of course.  

A while after I found him I was running one night and I heard an outraged meow coming from a pile of trash.  I looked and found a tiny dilute calico.  She hollered at me, angrily, as she licked the grease off a chicken nugget sauce container.  "Look what I'm eating?  Where the hell is my dinner?!"  So I did the only thing I could, I cut the run short, went home, and brought a can of cat food to her.  

She devoured it and followed me home, walked right in.  "It's about time".  She met Bubba and they hit it off immediately.  She was very sweet to us and him, fit in very well.  She liked to go out now and then.  Then she went into heat.  When I took her to the vet she weighed 4 pounds.  They fixed her, I took her home.  

She was very bonded to me and would cry at the door every night when I went out for my run or if I went to the store (Ron told me, he would call and I'd hear piteous cries).  One day we came home and she had been hurt.  Something had clearly left a nasty, deep, scratch across her face.  Her eye was damaged.  

We took her to the vet, Ron in his wheelchair holding the carrier in his lap.  We had gotten the social security back payment check so, for us, money was no object.  We went in the exam room.  The vet took her out and examined her, gave a deep sigh and looked at me.  

"She's blind in this eye" he said, grimly.  "What do you want to do?"  

I didn't understand.  "What do you mean?"  

He sighed again "You know".  

I looked at him, baffled. "No, I don't?  Can you spell it out for me?"  

He took a deep breath "Most people would put her down" Ron and I began objecting.  

Sometimes I have a split second retort - it doesn't happen often but it did that day.  I pointed at Ron, blind in both eyes sitting in his wheelchair.  

"I married him the way he is now" I replied.  "What do you think I want to do?"  He sighed again, this time with relief, and came up with a treatment plan.  

It involved eye drops.  Baby Girl hated the eye drops.  She went from a loving, sweet, clingy baby to hissing at me when she saw me with the bottle in my hand.  I couldn't think of what else to do, she needed the eye drops but they clearly hurt.  

In the meantime I had neighbor problems.  Neighbors across the way were letting toddlers play in the street.  They couldn't even walk and had to use little push toys to stay upright.  I spoke to them again and again.  Several times, paratransit drivers almost hit the babies.  What did it for me one day I saw the babies in the street unsupervised for over an hour.  I called Child Protective Services.  

They did an investigation.  The caseworker sided with the parents and told them I had called in the "anonymous" complaint.  The mother came after me, almost beat me up on one occasion (I told her a police report would look really good to CPS, she stormed off), tried to run me over one day with her car, etc.  And one day I was out on my run about 2 in the afternoon and I found their little boy wandering about half a mile from home.  He was still in his diaper.  

*At this point I should have called the police but I thought we could handle this the mature way*

So I took him home right as his frantic father found him missing.  I told him I found him wandering and where, handed the little boy back.  Then I added  "He could have been hit" (if a toddler is hit by a car they die, btw, but I didn't say that) "That's why I called, you know."  The father was very grateful but the mother hated me even more.  

The day we moved "someone" poisoned Baby Girl and she died a horrible death.  I feel terrible about it but looking back I still can't see what I could have done differently.  The parents were neglectful, a baby was going to get snatched or killed.  

So instead, I lost my baby.  Frosty came along about a year later and was completely bonded to me.  He was the second cat I had I lost to FLUTD.  

The babies are now grown with kids of their own, I imagine.  

That's it for now!