The Cat With No Back Legs...

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· A cat with no back legs was left in a shopping cart at Target with a sign that said "doesn't work right." A Target employee in Fort Worth, Texas, was collecting carts from the parking lot at closing when she found a cat in one of the carts. A small tabby sitting in the basket section of a red Target shopping cart in the far corner of the lot. No carrier. No box. Just a cat in a cart. There was a piece of cardboard leaning against the cart handle. Written in black marker: "Doesn't work right." The cat had no back legs. Both were missing from the hip. Not recently. The stumps were fully healed, covered in smooth fur. She'd been this way for a long time. She was sitting upright in the cart using her front legs for balance, her back end resting flat against the plastic. She was clean. She wasn't thin. Someone had been taking care of her. Someone had been taking care of her and then put her in a shopping cart with a sign that said she doesn't work right. The employee's name was Keisha. She was nineteen. She'd been on cart duty for three hours. She said she almost didn't walk to the far corner of the lot because it was ten minutes to close and those carts could wait until morning. She picked up the cat. The cat grabbed onto her vest with both front paws and held on. Keisha said that was the part she keeps thinking about. Not the sign. Not the cart. The grip. The cat grabbed her like she knew what a person leaving felt like and she wasn't going to let the next one go. Keisha put her in the break room. Her manager said she couldn't keep a cat in the store. Keisha said she's not in the store, she's in the break room. Her manager looked at the sign and the cart and said fine. Keisha took her home after her shift. Her apartment doesn't allow pets. She didn't care. She put the cat on her bed and the cat dragged herself across the comforter using her front legs and settled on the pillow and fell asleep in about thirty seconds. The vet said she was about four years old. Healthy. Well-fed. The leg loss was old — probably from birth or very early injury. No chip. Whoever had her had kept her alive and healthy for four years and then decided she doesn't work right. Keisha named her Cart. Cart moves around the apartment by pulling herself with her front legs. She's fast. Keisha said she was shocked how fast. She said Cart launches herself off the couch and slides across the kitchen floor and it looks like she's been doing it her whole life. Because she has. Keisha looked into a wheelchair — the two-wheeled carts that support a cat's back end. She found one online for a hundred and twenty dollars. She couldn't afford it. She posted on a local Facebook group asking if anyone had a used one. Fourteen people offered to buy her a new one. She got seven Venmo payments in two hours. She told everyone to stop. She said she only needed one. Cart got the wheelchair. She figured it out in one day. She runs now. Front legs pulling, back wheels rolling. She goes from the bedroom to the kitchen in about three seconds. Keisha posted one photo. Cart in the Target shopping cart. The sign leaning against the handle. "Doesn't work right." Next to it she posted a video. Cart in her wheelchair, sprinting across the apartment floor, sliding around the corner into the kitchen at full speed. The caption said: "Someone left her in a Target cart with this sign. She works fine. She works better than fine." Someone in the comments said: "She doesn't work right? She works different. Different isn't broken." That was the line. The cardboard sign is on Keisha's wall. She framed it. Black marker on brown cardboard. "Doesn't work right." Under the frame she wrote one word. Wrong.