The cat's pajamas

 Let me take you up the road to semi-rural Harford County, MD, where Cynthia Morgan, a school bus driver with 11 years of time in driving for the public schools (via contractor Cleary Transportation Inc.) had the can tied to her because she let a 10-year-old student hop off the bus to rescue an injured kitten on the road in the north part of the county.

The road where Alex Thomas was the only passenger still on the bus at the time is known as Heaps School Rd, and that should tell you that it's not like pulling over on I-95. It is in fact designated as a low-traffic rural road. So, Alex gets the kitten and the cat is taken for help and Alex gets home maybe 45 seconds late, so what's the issue?

The charges against Ms Morgan: Stopping at an unapproved/non-designated bus stop and letting a student exit the vehicle, alongside policies prohibiting unauthorized animals on school buses.

I've seen the back-and-forth online about all this. Most people take the sensible approach that sometimes, a little flexibility is a good thing when it comes to the choice of leaving an animal - to wit, a little kitten - in a dangerous place.

But then, there is a group of people I call the Whatifs. "What if the kid got off the bus and was run over by a car driven by a drunken politician?" "What if the cat was rabid and clawed her way to freedom, infecting the boy and the driver?" "What if the kitten belonged to a kindle of kittens out in rural Pylesville?"

This is not the actual kitten, but still.....

And to Mr and Mrs Whatif, I always come back with, "What if the 45-second delay in going down the road had saved the lives of the driver and the young man, not to mention the kitten, when a rogue communications satellite dropped out of the sky?"

This thing is dragging its way through the levels of bureaucrazy up there (misspelling intentional) and I hope that people will come to a level of common sense about it. The anonymous poem "Kindness To Animals" points out that gentle care of any animal is always returned. Maybe with affection, maybe with Androclean loyalty, maybe just, as in the poem, with a song from a robin in return for a few crumbs.

What's really crumby is firing the lady for doing the right thing. I expect everyone who had a "WWJD" wristband, tee shirt, or hat to stand up for Ms Morgan.