Last night during a rain storm my landlady showed up at my door.  She was carrying a tiny screaming black kitten.  The thing was maybe a week old, its eyes were open, but it was clearly a new born.  She had it wrapped up in tissues and was trying to clean it (it was covered in bugs) and feed it milk through a syringe. She couldn't bring it home because she has too many there already (about four) and her sons (whom she lives with) would be angry if she brought home another cat... she finds them on the street, she only brings the kittens home.  She brought a box and blankets and wanted me to take the cat.  'I can't' I told her.  "but it is so young and sick and it wont survive on its own".  'I know' I said, 'but someone has to feed it every two hours, and watch it and keep it warm, and I can't do that.  I have to work, I have to leave in a few minutes to help a friend.  I cannot keep the cat.'

"Maybe for three days" she said "and then you tell my son that you found it and then he will let me keep it"

after forty minutes of negotiations ... in Bosnian, which slowed everything down... "I said why can't I tell your son NOW that I found the cat?"

"Yes okay," she said "but call my younger son.  He will let me keep it if he thinks you found it".  She sits on my kitchen floor blowing me kisses as I call her son.

He comes over and holds the kitten, tells me people are heartless here, I tell him people are the same everywhere... and I am glad to see them leave with the cat.

As I leave moments later to go to my friend's place I can't help but think what it says about me that I would not keep the cat, that I would never take a sick kitten off the street home with me.  If I were in the States and found a littler of kittens I would call animal rescue, but I wouldn't take them home and nurse them to health, too much of a hassle, too much of a commitment, too many things could go wrong... and what if it died?! I wouldn't be able to just chuck it in the garbage.