shadow and tarra

Shadow, my neighbor's black cat, is a frequent visitor to our porch. For a Hohenwalder, my neighbor is pretty liberal and is always busy working with the high school color guard, or hosting a women's dinner party at her house, or getting together donations for hurricane victims. She cares about Shadow but does not have the funds to provide him with medical care. In the past couple of months, he has lost a drastic amount of weight and has been consistently losing fights with other stray cats around our apartments. He's covered in scratches and wounds. He's not healthy, and she asked me to take him to our local vet tomorrow. Of course I accepted; I want to help him, but if he has feline leukemia (which is likely) or another debilitating, uncurable disease, she wants me to make the decision about what to do for him, for example euthanasia. I care about him, but this should not be my decision. His own family should make that decision, and be there for him--I cannot.

So this got me thinking about people who decide to take care of animals. It angers me when people take in a pet and deny the responsibilty that that encompasses. They believe that providing them with food and water is enough. I understand that my neighbor cannot financially provide more than that for him, but it is unfair to Shadow and wrong to handover decisions regarding his life to another person. Especially when she does so without really asking me; she has a way of just laying these decisions on me assuming I will accept. It's unfair to both Shadow and me.
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But on a happier note, I am going to work at the new asian elephant barn today, where the girls have made it to the lakeland--a property including 2700 acres of land and a 25 acre lake. Happy happy girls. Here's Tarra: