Random act of pet kindness

A true cat tale follows...While our home boasts about its dog life most days we also have a resident feline named Chickabee (BeBe for short). Said cat has decided that indoor life is just too boring a way to spend a day in the life of a feline. As such, she has been quite successful in escaping out the front door as the dogs enter and exit for daily walks. 

Recently, as I'm corralling my feline after yet again another escape [this tale picks up at the point when I was 30 minutes into cat prompts, cuss words and dropping treat trails] a generous young man walks over to me (holding a feather) and says he saw me walking around the neighborhood and asked if he could help me. I, in utter cat frustration, reply "Well, if you think you are a cat whisperer by all means jump in." Without flinching this young man responds "Mam' I AM a student at the Vet College." 

So somewhere over there at the Big Red they teach the first rule of thumb with a confident, sassy, utterly frustrated pet owner: shut them down by framing a reference around who you are. WORKS. I immediately recoiled at my reaction to his offer of assistance... here's this guy with a feather in his hand and I'm throwing out some ridiculously clouded emotional response (what a poor excuse for a human I was in this instance). I paused long enough to quit chiding myself for seeming so ungrateful and thanked him for being so kind and said, out loud, that I indeed needed his help. 

Now here's the back story. This guy had just pulled up into the parking lot so while he's helping me his very large dog named Drake is sitting patiently in his master's truck watching the two of us pull our stealthiest cat retrieval moves. For about 20 minutes the dog waited and watched and this Cornell Vet student managed a frantic human. It's safe to say, as for Chickabee, having two humans in the game of catch me if you can just made it more fun. And it ended quite undramatically when she decided it was time to go home and walked unsolicited right up to the front door to be let in. It would have made a perfect periscope moment for viral feed this cat parade.

I keep saying to myself and to anyone I tell this story to...if this is how this kind human starts his career in veterinary medicine he will go far. Moral of the story? There is indeed hope when things seem impossible and if there's a vet student at hand most assuredly makes that true.