By Kelly Sargent
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​Erin is graciously letting me hijack Tucker Law one more time to see if we can find a home for this little ginger boy. We thought we'd found a home for him, but they've gone quiet.

He's getting neutered and vaccinated on October 20, and we'll pick him up from southwest Iowa on the 30th. If you don't have room for him, will you ask friends and family if they might have room for him? Surely there's somebody somewhere who will love him. 

By Kelly Sargent

I’m hoping you will excuse this personal note. I feel lucky to work for a law firm led by attorneys who are genuinely compassionate. They're letting me borrow this forum for a moment to look for a home for an abandoned cat.


Over course of a week, I was contacted by two different women, one from Lucas County, one from Oskaloosa, each looking for help finding a home for a cat. Thanks to a bucket brigade of people from South Carolina to Utah, we found a home for one of them, a sweet (so sweet) little Bengal whose pet parent had the magnanimity and moral courage to recognize that with five children of her own, seven daycare little ones and a dog in her home, it was too chaotic an environment for a cat to be happy.  

She posted on Facebook's Cat Lover's Community, someone from Utah commented, and a friend who lives in South Carolina, alerted me that this kitty, currently in Oskaloosa, needed rehoming. I wrote about it, my husband Paul shared it, and a college friend of his saw it, and said, "I'll take her!"

I launched out for Oskaloosa with a kennel in the back of the van, we got her transferred by putting the owner's kennel open end to end with mine. She cried all the way home to my house.

I was feeling pessimistic about my chances — and hers. I'd been warned that she was a hider who would scratch and claw if I tried to get her out from wherever she would hide, but I didn't want to leave her in the kennel all afternoon until Paul got home and we could leave for Omaha. When I came back into the den half an hour later, she was invisible, but to my surprise, she called to me. She had climbed up into the top of a very tall closet where I would not have been able to remove her, and then contrary to what I had been led to expect, she warmed up quickly. Soon she was sitting next to me on the couch and finally laying in my lap purring.

The next challenge was getting her back into the kennel for transport. I wondered whether I could succeed or if I would finally meet the scratching, clawing cat I was warned about. I carried the cage back in the room, put the big blanket back in and sprayed it heavily with anti-anxiety cat pheromones. The aroma attracted her and she walked into the kennel of her own accord. Whew!

I told Paul that I thought we should be silent on the drive because from Oskaloosa to our house, talking to her only made her cry louder. We drove half the way not speaking, but I couldn’t bear how miserable she sounded, so I climbed into the back of the van and opened the cage to see what would happen. She climbed up in my lap and stopped crying! I petted her all the way to Omaha.

She is now happily ensconced in her new home where she is the only pet and utterly adored.

Now we need to find a home for this sweet little ginger boy picture above who was dumped on a gravel road far out in rural Iowa. The woman who found him is caring for him, but can't afford to keep him. Can you help me form another bucket brigade and find him a home? I will drive him anywhere within a day's drive of Des Moines. He will already have been neutered and vaccinated.