Now Old Mr Johnson had troubles of his own

Ever since last night, off and on, I've had a stray cat mewing at my back porch and occasionally my front door. I was mostly able to ignore it (I respect its privacy and don't wish to look to see if it's a boy or a girl), though I did go out onto the porch to pet it last night. I thought it'd get bored and wander off after I went to go to sleep. WRONG. Just as with the camping song, the cat came back the very next day.

I went to the grocery store today, and when I came back, there it was. In the light, I could see better, and it looks like the poor thing has got mange or some other kind of thing. Well, I don't know if it's mange. There's still hair everywhere, it's just not as thick in certain places on its back half. A kid coulda taken an electric razor to it a couple weeks ago to give it that same look.

After I put my groceries away, I went back outside to pet it for a few minutes. It's very friendly. My next door neighbor pulled up then, so I decided to go to the mailbox, as I don't want to get reported to management. I can see where someone else would get annoyed. After all, if its mewing was distracting to me actually being awake at 3AM, think of how much more annoying it is if it's 3AM and you're asleep.

When I came back from checking my mail, the cat was no where to be seen. I didn't think anything of it until I went inside and about 15 minutes later I smelled rain. Sure enough, it had started to rain, and shortly thereafter I heard the thunderclap. I suppose the cat heard the thunder before I did and that's why it went to find some place to stay dry. At this point, I feel bad, because while I'm hesitant about keeping a stray considering my 12 hour shifts, there's no way in hell I was going to make it stay outside in a Texas thunderstorm (even if Texas thunderstorms are the premature ejaculation of weather patterns: noisy and powerful and over all too quickly).

Here are a couple pics of the cat so you can see how much of a heartless bastard I am for not relenting soon enough. Forgive the quality of the photos; the thing seems to never stop moving, so there's a bit of blur in the first one.