How my writer's block saved a cat

This morning, I was suffering from a bad case of writer's block. I did what I usually do when the writing doesn't flow: I drove to a nature preserve and put on my running shoes. Running has this way of unclogging my brain, something Nathan Bransford (whose excellent Wonderbar novel launched this week) (yes, that was a shameless piece of product placement) has also found effective.

Anyway, after my run, just as I was about to get into my car, I heard a meowing. I was in a desolate parking lot in the middle of nowhere, so my curiosity was piqued. I looked down, and this is what I found:

I'm not a cat person - I'm firmly Team Dog - but something about this cat broke me inside. It was famished, thirsty, and frail. When I patted it, it was sticks & bones. But clearly domesticated - it didn't have a feral bone in it. I poured it some water and it lapped it up. Finished a whole bottle, in fact. It kept meowing, clearly hungry. And it was starving for affection - it kept trying to rub its body on my leg. And then it crawled under my car, coming out only when it wanted to rub its body on my leg again.

(its eyes are focused on my leg it wanted to rub against. again.)

I couldn't leave it, so I called the animal shelter. They were great - they got there within minutes. The staff lady calmly put it into a box, then into the van. She told me a cat owner had called about a week ago, frantic about a cat she'd lost at that very nature preserve. Hopefully, this is the same cat, and there's a happy ending to this story. I'm going to call the shelter next week and make sure this cat found its owner. If not, I might just head down to the shelter myself and adopt the cat. It did a number on me, it did.

Anyway, this just goes to show that writer's block isn't always a terrible thing.