Some stories mysterious

CLOVIS - Get ready to be sad.

Someone left a cat in a pet bed outside Clovis' animal shelter sometime Monday night or early Tuesday morning.

Tayler Fields, who works next door at the Food Bank of Eastern New Mexico, saw it across the way and went to investigate.

She found it cold and lifeless. She feared it had frozen to death. She alerted shelter officials anyway, a few hours before they were scheduled to open.

Fields is used to seeing abandoned animals. She grew up in a rural area near Cannon Air Force Base, where she routinely found homeless dogs wandering around.

But this cat, it turns out, was probably not abandoned and left to the elements.

Shelter Supervisor Marty Martinez said it had almost certainly died before it was left outside the gate - he guessed at least 24 hours before it was found.

"People do that all the time," he said. "I've never seen anybody drop off an animal like that, but we show up and they're there."

The National Weather Service provides evidence for his theory.

Temperatures briefly dropped below freezing Tuesday morning, but it wasn't cold enough for long enough to be the cause of death for an animal nestled in bedding. And a living creature would likely have gone in search of shelter anyway, or at least wandered away looking for adventure or companionship if it had been abandoned.

Martinez said he does not know why pet owners drop off their deceased animals after hours at the shelter.

Maybe they're avoiding landfill fees.

Maybe they think the shelter provides some kind of humane disposal.

Maybe they don't want to throw a friend in the trash.

So maybe this story isn't all that sad after all when you think about it.

The cat may well have been much loved.

Either way, a woman on her way to work, probably in a hurry with a lot to do that morning, saw what she thought was an abandoned animal and went out of her way to try and help.

We'll probably never know the cat's story.

But we know what Tayler Fields is about.

David Stevens is editor for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at:

[email protected]