SQJ Taipei

My goal was 40km.

Reaching that goal was seriously in doubt when, in my 2nd kilometer, I saw 2 dogs attacking a kitten. I have to admit that I really didn’t want to stop as I knew we couldn’t take another cat. We already have 1 which is probably twice as many as we should have.

However… I couldn’t just keep riding… so I stopped… scooped up the wet and injured and bleeding kitten (I estimate her about 4 weeks old) unzipped my belly bag… transferred my phone to my pocket… transferred the kitten to the bag… zipped the kitten in the bag… and took off again.

A little while later, I found a nice sunny spot and stopped to examine the kitten more closely and figure out what to do.

I decided that the kitten was totally freaked out… had some cuts… but was going to be OK. I couldn’t let it go, but I really wanted to get in 40km… so I slung my belly bag over my neck and under my shirt… put the kitten in the bag and then tucked in my shirt so the kitten would be against my chest and stomach and inside my shirt. This would keep her warm and hopefully make her feel safer. I think I was successful because I hardly heard a peep out of her the rest of the ride. I checked for movement with my hand on a few occasions to make sure she was alive.

Even though I had a cat in a bag hanging around my neck and it was very windy, I was able to make my 40km goal and be back in time to pick up my daughter from ballet. She was pretty surprised when I told her I had a kitten. We took her out of the bag and stopped for dinner, sharing some with the kitten of course.

We stopped by home to pick up my oldest son so he could see the kitten and come with us to our cat’s vet and see if he would take this kitten in - which he did - although he wasn’t totally excited about it since someone had dropped off a litter of kittens earlier in the day.

I don’t know what we would have done if he would not have taken her.

These were taken with my Sony Ericsson w200i which has a fairly poor camera but an absolutely sweet mp3 function which I put to good use almost daily.

Here she is…

If you start at the 中正橋 Yunghe side and ride for 20km towards Tucheng… you reach the end of the road. Here it is…

The stairs go up to a street.

I recommend this ride with or without a cat.