Fact #16 : Animal neglect, cruelty and abandonment is extremely bothersome to me.
I have been known to pick up stray animals on the side of the road. In fact I can’t even count on both hands the number of cats and dogs that I have scooped up.
Oh geez, now I guess I have to tell a famous Lane story. Don’t worry, I’ll make it quick.
When I was in college I took a geology class with a teacher whom was a real go getter. He decided that he wanted to take the entire class on a weekend field trip to look at the geology of Texas. I was bummed to give up my weekend of parting to sit around with a bunch of rock nerds. I needed a good grade in the class so I went along as told. On Sunday morning, the last day of our field trip, we were covering the Llano basin area. We first stopped at the Llano River to check out whatever rock it was that’s in the river (you can tell that I paid close attention, huh?).
Once we were done hearing about the stupid river, we took an hour bus ride to check out a ginormous slab of granite. We viewed the acres of granite from a rest stop on the side of the road. I was sitting on the ground daydreaming as my prof went on and on about the pointless rock. I was amazed when I glanced down and saw the most adorable little kitten, who could not have been any bigger than the palm of my hand. The kitty looked up and gave me the most pathetic like “meow”, and at that second I knew that I was not going to leave him on the side of the highway. Some bastard must have dumped the poor little baby. Once the class noticed that I was holding a kitten, people started to surround me as they began to pet the little guy. Our professor wanted to know what was going on so he busted though the students. He began laughing with that old man laugh that he had and yelled, “Everyone quit making a fuss over that wild cat”.
My fellow classmates started to get on the bus but I didn’t have it in me to leave the kitty behind. The teacher saw me standing on the side of the road so he approached me and quietly said, “Get on the bus, it’s time to go”. It was then that I looked up at him with tears in my eyes and told him that was not leaving without the cat. I still can’t believe the next words that came out of his mouth. He said, “Well fine, if you are going to get upset over it, then take the damn cat with you, but whatever you do, you better not tell the faculty that I let you get on the bus with that animal.”
We made a few more stops to look at some more rocks and at each stop I would let kitty join us. Before I knew it we were on our way back to College Station with the kitty in tow. I remember him jumping from seat to seat and from student to student, basically spazzing out as we drove across Texas. At one point in the trip my professor came up to me and he said, “Since I let you take him home, the least you can do for me is name his after a rock”.
Granite! I decided to name him Granite, after the rock! To this day Granite is a happy go lucky house cat that lives with my parents. I would say that he is one lucky feline.
p.s. From that trip on, everyone in the class called me “the cat girl”. My professor even asked me to bring him to class on the last day of school. We all referred to him as our class mascot.
