Hearts Too Large
Apr. 2nd, 2004 12:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
redthroatedloonSo Kate, from three houses down, rings our doorbell at 11:30 p.m., just as I'm cleaning up after my S.O. has finished putting two potato puddings in the oven (one for my mother's seder, one for ours). Even in Brooklyn, people coming by at 11:30 p.m. is not usual, so my inner alarm bells immediately go off.
Kate, a rotund young woman in her late 20s with a heart too large for her own good, is standing at the door, distraught. She found a cat on the sidewalk that had obviously been hurt, and took it home (she's got 11 of her own). She called her vet, who told her to give the cat a quarter of an aspirin and that he'd come in early in the morning to see it. Kate's exhausted from studying for a midterm and from coming off a court case (she's always on trial for some demonstration or other; she spends her life getting arrested), and she's not sure whether she shouldn't just take the cat to the emergency animal hospital, but she just can't afford it. So she bursts into tears.
Poor thing. We give her the aspirin, and listen to her stories, and say soothing things, and try tactfully to suggest that if the cat doesn't make it through the night, she shouldn't blame herself. She seems a bit better when she leaves, but aside from the aspirin, there's not a whole lot we can do.
People like that make me feel terribly selfish. But at the same time, they have so much trouble making it through the world.
Kate, a rotund young woman in her late 20s with a heart too large for her own good, is standing at the door, distraught. She found a cat on the sidewalk that had obviously been hurt, and took it home (she's got 11 of her own). She called her vet, who told her to give the cat a quarter of an aspirin and that he'd come in early in the morning to see it. Kate's exhausted from studying for a midterm and from coming off a court case (she's always on trial for some demonstration or other; she spends her life getting arrested), and she's not sure whether she shouldn't just take the cat to the emergency animal hospital, but she just can't afford it. So she bursts into tears.
Poor thing. We give her the aspirin, and listen to her stories, and say soothing things, and try tactfully to suggest that if the cat doesn't make it through the night, she shouldn't blame herself. She seems a bit better when she leaves, but aside from the aspirin, there's not a whole lot we can do.
People like that make me feel terribly selfish. But at the same time, they have so much trouble making it through the world.
