It's been awhile

The Ngöbe family and the bag of cats

I was riding into town by the futbol pitch and saw a Ngöbe family
group heading the same way in front of me. I watched a young boy chasing a skinny cat across the street and grabbing it by the hind legs, he dropped the limp cat into a bag he was holding. As I passed I was filled with a osense of there is something wrong here so I wheeled the Monk-cycle around and went back to the group of two women and four children to ask what was going on. I noticed the other boy also carrying a bag that was moving with life inside it and the silhouette of a round head pulsing against the restraint of the small bag. There was weight to the bag from the way the boy carried it and there looked like what could be rocks or some kind of ballast at the bottom. Communication was poor with my poor Spanish and their blank looks as the young girls and two boys just giggled as the two bags vibrated.
My mind quickly fixed on a scenario of the group on their way into town for whatever purpose with a stop and drop at the ferry landing and the end of the cats in the bag.
What to do? Try to understand the situation and reason for the sparing of the cats? Call the Policia and Sgt. Sanchez? Buy the bags of cats? Follow them to see the final chapter of this story or ride on to the obligations that awaited me in town?
I rode on.
I have thought about this incident many times since that moment and wondered how it fit into my practice, how it influenced my practice. If the situation did end at the ferry landing did I fail to benefit and preserve life or did I turn my back on the life in those bags and miss a moment of goodness?
This practice of mine is far from perfect as I am far from perfect and I have to use everything that approaches me as teaching. I learned that I can't do everything and I can't know everything to be as it appears to be or is it anything else as the Zen axe says.
Life is delicate and not always with a happy ending and there will be another moment, another bag of cats in my life and I hope that I will understand and do that which is right effort and compassionate.
I am grateful for that bag of cats and may any benefit arising from this effort serve to alleviate the suffering of all beings: those near and far, above and below, seen and unseen; beings with 2 legs and 4 legs, wings and fins, born and yet to be born. May all beings be happy, may all beings be peaceful, may all beings realize their Buddha Nature...