You’ve heard of sausage dogs, now there’s a Sausage cat

Meant to be.

You accepted a job offer a week before the company you work for goes into liquidation.

Meant to be.

You found a stray kitten in a Bunnings car park and take it home with you.

Meant to be.

Or was it?

The last example is based on a true story.

It was late Saturday afternoon when I was sat in the passenger seat of my ute while my middle child was having a driving lesson and my youngest was in the back.

My eldest phoned and asked if I could take him to Bunnings when we got home.

I could have done that, but we were close to Bunnings, so, instead, we went to grab what he needed on our way past.

That decision placed us there at the exact same moment a man was chasing a frightened and elusive kitten in and around cars.

We stopped to help and when my son got hands on the tiny fluff ball, I offered to take it and sort out its temporary care.

I believed this caretaking job would span no more than an hour.

I could not keep the kitten at home for any length of time, with a baby gate dividing two sides of my house, each ruled by territorial anti-social animals who still don’t see eye to eye.

My dog would like nothing more than to eat cats.

My cat (a rescue from the pound) would like nothing more than to brawl with them. (And probably to also eat the dog in a parallel universe where the food chain is reversed.)

So, I put the kitten in my cat carrier in the bathroom with some water and a blanket and shut the door, while I went to contact services.

I messaged a local animal rescue service first and waited for a response.

Thinking maybe it was unmanned on the weekend, I then called the vet’s after hours line and selected the ‘found a stray animal’ option.

I was transferred to council, where the operator told me he couldn’t pick up a stray on a weekend unless it was injured and that if I couldn’t keep it or a friend couldn’t help out, I’d have to ‘let it go’.

Kind of confusing advice since it’s been illegal for a cat to roam in Greater Shepparton since December 1996 (under the Domestic Animals Act 1994 ).

The very reason I brought the kitten home was to remove it from danger. I did not fancy placing it right back on the street.

So, while I irritated my kids by reminding them a manic number of times there was a kitten in the bathroom and to not, under any circumstances, leave the door open, I was racked with anxiety about potential breached borders within the house that would most definitely result in an injured animal.

I rang the vet again and selected a different menu option to speak with a human.

I was told they could not accept the abandoned little button unless it was injured either.

Understandable. However, not being a vet or a vet nurse myself and with very minimal experience with kittens quite that small, I couldn’t tell if it was actually injured.

Okay, there’s still hope, I thought, and my phone pinged with a response from the animal rescue.

Unfortunately, it did not have capacity to take it on with no foster carers available.

(How good is it that there are foster carers looking after surrendered and abandoned animals, but how sad is it that there are so many that need caring for.)

I went from three avenues to none, an outcome I had not expected.

But, I accepted my (temporary) fate that I was this kitten’s foster carer for the time being.

I took a trip to the supermarket for kitten-specific food and kitten-specific milk with a detour to Kmart for other kitten-rearing supplies.

After reading the packet of a flea treatment I’d just dropped an unplanned 20 bucks on, I discovered I couldn’t even use it, given the kitten’s tender age.

Should have read that packet in store.

By this stage, my son had named the kitten Sausage, because it was found at Bunnings, which is arguably more famous for its charity snags than the tools it sells.

We bathed Sausage in an attempt to rid the fleas, and she (or he) sat there calmly, looking up at us from the tepid water with her (or his) blue eyes almost too big for her (or his) head as though she’d (or he’d) claimed us.

No, no, no, I thought.

A name, an imprint. This was surely not the sliding door we were meant to walk through.

Before the end of the weekend and before we got too attached, an animal-loving friend took Sausage off our hands.

The pseudo balance was restored in our partitioned home for our existing anti-social animals.

Perhaps Sausage might have been the cat-alyst for an armistice between them.

But, I guess we’ll never know, because we chose a different door.