Saving the world, one kitten at a time

We've already extended the rental on our car twice as we were racing down the N-1 to make it to Lisbon during the pathetic two hour window that Eurocar is open between their two hour lunch break and when they close. Somehow all the businesses can manage being open for only 4 hours a day, I have no idea what people in Portugal do if they need to rent a car after 4 pm. Avoiding the tolls means taking the smaller roads that wind through industrial parks, main streets of small towns and the "rotas du vihno" which lead you through wine country but take you no where near vineyards that you can actually tour or taste. It's infinitely more scenic than the toll roads, but takes twice the time.

It looked like we might just make it, even though we had to forgo out planned stop for Leito, the regional specialty of roast suckling pig. At first, when talking to the football team that more or less adopted us at the wine festival, I assumed that it was just a smaller breed of pig. Two days later, in the rare silence between Leigh and I, I burst out "oh, suckling, as in baby pig!" It was one of those classic Genna finally catches-on-moments, followed by the classic Leigh-makes-fun-of-how-slow-Genna-is moments. But, if we held course and weren't tempted by a road side coffee shop we would make it in time to drop off the car and find a place to sleep in Lisbon.

Up ahead the cars in front of us were all swaying to the right to swerve around something, which I assumed was trash or a dead animal. It isn't until we approach that it hits me as Leigh makes the same jarring swerve trying not to hit it, a kitten! Holy shit, what is a kitten doing in the middle of the road! What the hell is a kitten doing in the middle of the road!

As Leigh swung the car to the right to avoid it, it looked like it is rolling over on its back, almost like it were playing, proving it was still alive. A hundred yards up when got our breath back Leigh asked if we should go back, pull it out of the road. It's still there, still alive, when we get back to it and I lept out of the car, getting splashed by the passing trucks and honked at by other drivers who must have thought "what is this crazy girl downing in the middle of the road." I must looked like an idiot, scooping up near road kill in the middle of the wet road with the bright green scarf that I bought in India. Luckily, it looks like everybody was taking to toll roads and traffic was sparse, it was easy to make it over to the shoulder to set the limping stray in the grass, where it just sat there, limp but living. It was so wet and pathetic that it looked more like a drenched rat than something little girls would beg their parents for. Leigh as pulled the car back on to the road, she looked at me with that a sort of sad desperation. "We can't just leave it there."

So ten minutes later were driving towards Leiria, a town on the way to Lisbon, with the car reeking like wet cat. Leigh had no idea what to do, I had no idea what to do. We were now in a country where we spoke nearly none of the language with a barely living kitten we found of the side of the road. How do you say vet in Portuguese? How were we going to explain to explain that yes, we know stray animals die in the roads all of the time in this country? Yes, we were those bleeding heart Americans who wanted to save this furry little creature.

These are the kind of situations where I am usually the sensitive one and Leigh acts and the reasonable half of our operation. You couldn't say our pair is brains and brawns so much and brains and a little too much heart. But this time, as we are both becoming aware of the possibility that the best thing we can do it to put it to sleep, and the fact that we might be the ones left with that terrible responsibility, you can tell that she is as soft as I am. We can't kill it ourselves, we've got to find a vet, somehow.

Driving into the next town, the tiny wet creature I've got in my lap starts to move. When I first wrapped my fingers around its fading body it was barely moving. Breathing seemed like all it could do, you would expect a stray to struggle as you plucked it off of the road, but this one just lay in the scarf passively. Its front leg was twisted, looking deformed and broken, but finally, just as we are entering the next city, it is starting to move, to put weight on its legs and to notice that the inside of this car was not the environment it was used to.

Leigh pulled in to the parking lot next to the town market that was just coming to a close. With the cat in my arms, hoping that "kitten wrapped in scarf" might come across as "where is the nearest vet?" to whomever we could find. In the pattern of our constant dumb luck, the town vet is just around the block. More dumb luck, it was open even though we have arrived doing Portugal's gaping lunch hour. Oh yeah, and the vet was the most attractive man I have ever seen. This is the man women fantasize about when they fantasize about vets. As he opened the down, the two of us where stunned. It took several minutes, between our language struggle and our general goofiness around good looking men who aren't immediately trying to sleep with us, to explain that we had a stray cat that we found on the road, and yes, we wanted him to do something about it.

Naturally, good-looking-vet-guy was also super-compassionate-vet guy. He brought us into his office, where I am sure each of us secretly hoped he would seduce us, felt the kitten's insides with a stethoscope, helped it to poop (which seemed to be it's biggest probably), found it's dislocated hip, and gave us the best news of our life, "it is probably going to recover just fine." I was shocked when Leigh, who swears to never want a pet, asked the question I was thinking, "do you know the rules about flying animals from Portugal to the US?" In the same soothing voice he used to tell the cat (in English, by the by) "I know, I know" as it squealed at having it's little cat turds pushed out of it, he told us it needed rest, to come back in three hours and it should be much better. After dicking around in town, looking for a wine co-op and ending up at the super-market instead, we returned to find our wet rat transformed to a fluffy, adorable, and calm kitten, thanks to some rest, food and kitty drugs.

Don't freak out Mom, I am not bring a kitten home with me. Not that I didn't contemplate the possibility of either bring him to Macedonia with us, or even returning there after to pick him up. Turns out smuggling cats into the United States is almost as hard as smuggling drugs into the United States.