so dumb of me, again

...just got home, about 4 hours later than expected, and no, was not out partying. The saga started yesterday, when some woman got hold of the rehab emergency cell no, and after she wailed all over the senior volunteer who had the phone for an hour, s.v. eventually said she would see if she could find help, although it was not wildlife, nor rehab, nor, actually, any bloody thing that the centre does. And calls me. Sucker-of-the-month is going to be my new title.

Turns out the woman has 24 cats and is being evicted from the house she rents, for not paying the rent. "Well" she tells me indignantly, "it's not like it cost the landlord anything, he's selling the house anyway!". Umm, possibly because he couldn't pay the mortgage because you won't pay your rent? Or is that silly real-life economics, and thus irrelevant? So she's found some other sucker to house her, but now the sheriff of the court has come to serve notice on her, and she needs to move asap, and - hysterical sobbing here - how is she going to move all her cats? "Because all the dumb bastards with pick-ups are just so selfish and hard that they won't help poor animals in distress". Right, and maybe the fact that you use some really vile epithets to describe people. And that none of them actually know you anyway, seeing as they are all people you just attack at random and demand service from.

Supposed to happen yesterday but she postponed. I get to the house after fighting rush hour for 45 mins - she isn't there, nothing is ready. I call, she'll be there "in 15 mins max". An hour later I'm almost ready to just leave when she arrives. She demands to hug me, I refuse, she gets all attitudinal with me. More vile terms to describe ex-landlord, new landlord, sundry other people. I tell her not to use those terms when talking with me because I don't like them. More righteous indignation, as in "well it's OK to call him a slimy Jewboy because he is Jewish!" and similar logic for other terms. I tell her I don't like the way she speaks, and to please not do it. She flounces off. I ask her to please pack cats (who are very nervous, she tells me, "because some stupid k** broke in and scared them") in the carriers I'd brought. Four in each of these two, and 12 in the big one. 20 mins later. It starts raining. She yells to me to come inside, I say "no, please just bring the cats in the crates so we can go". She can't work out what she should do. Pack the f-ing cats, I say. 4, 4 and 12, and bring the smaller carriers out to me. Another 30 mins. I am standing out in the rain. She wants to know whether she should put Cat X in with Cat Y. I haven't a freaking clue. Eventually, after she lets one or possibly two out of the crate and then has hysterics, an unknown number of cats are packed in the back of my pick-up. I suggest we leave immediately, I have now been there for more than two hours, and we still have a long way to go. Conniptions about how she will have to come back for all the junk that I wasn't taking (which she had promised to do in the afternoon), about leaving the runaway cat, about where we were going, when I got brutal and told her I was leaving and if she couldn't give me the address, then she could take her own damn cats. Needless to say...wrong address. Wrong number. Wrong street. Wrong bloody evening to do this to me.

The only thing I could actually agree with her on was when she cried a whole lot more, and told me that it wasn't fair that she had to look after all her cats on only a mean little disability grant. Yep, not fair. On the cats.....