The Homeless Woman

I work three jobs, and one is as a maintenance technician for a seedy hotel. I was going to check the swimming pool and spa chemicals one Saturday morning a couple of weeks back, and a homeless, blond  white woman (she told me that she was homeless but staying with a friend at the hotel for awhile) with flushed reddish coloring (alcoholic) stopped me on the second floor hallway at about 7 in the morning.

She complained that her toilet was malfunctioning and I said I would fix it right away and I did.

She and her dog came into the bathroom of the hotel room while I finished up. He was a cut, heavy Corgi mix. She referred to him as her therapy dog. The poor thing was screaming and yowling, looking at her with a pitiful glance. She commented that he was starving and had not eaten for 2 days. She said that she had no car to get him dog food, so he had not been fed.

Now our hotel breakfast was a little skimpy, but I said I would go down and whip something up for the pup and bring it right up

There were no sausages for eggs served that morning, so I took two pieces of whole wheat bread and tore them up, and put them in a breakfast, Styrofoam bowl and poured a cup of milk over them,

I was headed right back up to the hotel room, when I noticed the homeless woman at a table with several waffles, heaped with butter and syrup. I said I would give her the meal for the pup, and she could feed him when she was done eating. She grunted something, and my hunch is that she would not care if he got fed, or would just forget to give him his food.

I said in exasperation that I would deliver the food personally to make sure that he got fed. She was rather defensive and retorted that she had to get fed too.

I took the food up to the pup right away and he wolfed it down.

Now she likely had been there for a few days, and knew that breakfast for guests was served from 7 to 10 daily so there was no chance at 7:30 a.m. that she would miss a meal by taking care of her pup.

I was furious at her thoughtlessness and selfishness in regard to the one creature that loved her without condition and devoted his life to her well-being. It makes one realize that however down and out anyone is, to some degree or to a large degree, it is their fault for their poor and dismal circumstances.

I am a big eater and am fat because I love my food. But, I tell you this, the cat and dog at our house are fed, watered and go to the bathroom each day an hour before I get fed. When our kids were small, they got fed before us or at the same time, with the same portions of meat and desserts.

Not to feed that starving, beautiful, pitiful creature first, was an unconscionable oversight that enraged and disgusted me.