How to waste $25

Friday was a big day for The Cat. The Cat is how we refer to the stray that's been living in our garage for the past six months. At one point, TJ was calling her Milo, but then informed me that Milo wasn't her name after all. So, she went back to being The Cat.

Bill and I had seen a male cat after her (she seemed highly insulted by that experience), and decided we didn't want to risk a garage full of kittens, so we made an appointment with C-snip (a local non-profit) to get her fixed. They would do the procedure for $45, which is cheaper than any vet we could find.

About a week ago, our neighbor across the street told us he thought he knew who owned the cat. We asked him to call them, since we had the appointment set up, and didn't want to fix the cat if someone was willing to step forward and be responsible for her. Well, we never heard back from the neighbor, and the cat was around just as much as usual ('usual' means she sleeps in our garage six out of seven nights a week, spends the majority of the day in our garage, or within eyesight of our yard, and asks for food at least twice a day). I had thought that if someone knew she was mooching off of us, they would have made an effort to give her more food and water, and possibly try to keep her in her own yard. That didn't happen, so we went forward with the plans to get her fixed.

Bill brought her in on Friday morning and picked her up after work on Friday. And when he picked her up, he was informed that when they opened her up, they discovered 'she' was ALREADY an 'it'! Yep, she had been fixed some time ago! They reassured Bill that this happens fairly often and they refunded us $20 of the $45. She bounced back fairly quickly, since she didn't actually have surgery, just an incision. The people at C-snip said she was fixed 'years ago', which makes no sense to me. When I started seeing her last summer, she was not full grown. I'm wondering if she was fixed last summer and it just healed really well. They could not tell she had a scar. Bill had also checked and not seen evidence of a surgery.

Anyway, I keep mulling this over. Did we waste $25? Is there someone nearby snickering over the fact that we tried to fix their already 'fixed' cat? Or is $25 worth the peace of mind knowing that there will never be kittens in my garage? I'm going with that attitude.