While backing out of her driveway one day, my girlfriend, Jan, stopped and got out of her car.When I went to investigate the problem with her, I saw a mangy and stray cat. It smelled like you would not believe, and it had a mohawk running down its back from malnutrition. The damn thing was so ugly it was adorable.We felt sorry for him initially, but just assumed it was a little hurt, so we set out some food and assumed it would recover.Two weeks later, Jan’s son Arron told us he saw bone sticking out of its leg.We immediately set out to rescue the cat and find it help.Because I go to the University, and we have a school of veterinary medicine, the first place I thought to call was our vet school. We were not looking to adopt a new pet, but what kind of person would leave a poor, defenseless animal to fend for itself? I called the University’s small animal clinic.When I finally got in touch with them, they told me I had two options.I could pay the vet clinic $25 and have the animal put to sleep — not really an option.The second was to bring the animal in — if we could catch it — and pay $100 just to determine if they could help it. If they could, we would then be responsible for the full cost of any procedures needed and the cost of any medication required.Remember, this is a teaching hospital.They need patients, and we were offering one.Now, I was never a cat person growing up. It wasn’t that I didn’t think they were cute or that I had some inherent hatred of cats like many people. For some reason, my family was always just a dog family. The fact that I was massively allergic to them also propelled my dislike. My eyes would itch and swell shut, and I could never stop sneezing.Oddly, in my mid 20s, the allergies subsided. It could have been the fact I wound up living with one for three years. Or, my immune system changed and I could handle them.And all of a sudden, I turned into a cat person.But why wouldn’t you love cats? They are soft and cute. They have the most interesting little personalities. They are impossible not to love.It is this profound inherent change in me which made this summer exceptionally hard.Because we could not afford massive medical bills — especially for a stray cat — I began calling around to different veterinarians in the Baton Rouge area. Shockingly, almost all of them immediately referred us to the University’s small animal clinic. There seemed to be almost no options.We did not want to teach vet students to kill an animal.We had no options until we contacted the Azalea Lake Veterinary Clinic on Jefferson Highway. Understanding our position, they put us in contact with the Capital Area Animal Welfare Society who agreed to help with the medical costs. CAAWS was even helpful enough to loan us a trap so we could catch the animal and provided us instructions on how to do so without traumatizing the poor animal or further injuring him.Once we had him trapped, we took him to the vet clinic for treatment. As it turns out, Arron was right. He had a multiple compound fracture of the front left leg, and it never healed properly. Nothing could be done for the leg, and we were forced to make an exceptionally difficult decision.The leg was amputated.For two weeks this stray cat, now named Tee – we couldn’t subject him to a name like Tripod or Lucky – convalesced in Jan’s house. The people at Azalea Lake even gave us pain medication for the cat free of charge. We did the best we could to take care of the cat, including one night when he would not come out from under a bed and we scared the crap out of him – literally.Now, this animal the University’s vet clinic wanted to put down lives in the backyard under Jan’s car. While he is not exactly a pet, he is a very grateful and loving animal. The once malnourished animal with a mangy coat is now soft and putting on weight.The University’s “teaching hospital” told us it would take thousands of dollars to fix the cat.Azalea Lake amputated, medicated and neutered the animal for $125.Not a tough choice.—-Contact Matt McEntire at [email protected]