A bad picture

This isn't a good picture of the cat I'm about to tell you about, but it's what I can provide right now.
This cat showed up last Thursday. New people had moved into the basement next door with a screaming baby. This cat showed up in the walkway between houses with a bunch of furniture that it was very attached to. It spent it's time lounging around on the back of the sofa and let people pet it. It wouldn't leave the walkway. It had food dishes nearby. It was clearly owned by the people who had the furniture.
Tonight (Tuesday) we returned from our travels to find the cat still on the back of the now waterlogged sofa. It was still very friendly, but now won't put down it's front left foot and has a matted yucky spot on it's back right leg.
Yummy knocked on the door of the people in the basement and asked if it was their cat. The woman who opened the door seemed a bit slow. Nothing genetic or developmental. It seemed more cultural and lack-of-a-proper-education-al. She said Yep. It was hers and it was a house cat until their (hers and her live in boyfriend's) 18 month old tried to pet it too aggressively and the cat scratched it.
From the way the kid was screaming I would never have guessed it was 18 months old. 6 months I could buy. 18 and that kind of sound means there's some neglect going on.
Sure, the "baby" comes first. I get that. So you teach the kid to be nice to animals. Not unload the animal. Yummy finds loads of animals in similar situations on Craigslist all the time and wants to smack every one of their owners.
The woman said that they wanted to take the cat to the local shelter, but they were charging $25 for them to leave the cat. Her grandma was going to come take the cat to the shelter near her place where they'd take the cat for free.

Yummy asked if we could take the cat in and get it cleaned up. You know, since it was injured, likely in a fight with another cat. So now we have a cat that is going to go to a shelter. Black cats don't adopt out well, this one has injuries I can't find or diagnose so the shelter will view it as broken, and we have reason to believe the shelter they're gonna take it to is a kill shelter. Giving it back is a death sentence.

It's a very sweet and friendly cat. It got upset when we took it out of the alley, but didn't lash out. I poured water over it but it only crawled out of the bathtub instead of taking a swipe at me. It let me wash the leg with a wet cloth, trim away matted hair, and poke and prod the injured areas without a complaint. And it needs a home before Saturday when Yummy's normal cat comes back home.

If you know anyone in the DC/Baltimore area please ask them if they're willing to take a wonderful 2 year old cat or if they'd ask their friends if they'd take it.

I appreciate any help you can provide in finding it a home.

Interested parties should comment on this blog entry or e-mail green_canary at hotmail dot com.