I was driving home from work last night when I came across a cat at the side of the road, it had clearly been hit by a car. I drove past and carried on going home, but couldn't stop thinking about the poor thing - maybe it was still alive, but in any case, I know that as a cat owner myself, I would rather know what had happened to my cat, than for it to be cleaned up by the street sweepers in the morning and not to know what had happened.
So anyway, I went back and had a look. Sadly, it was clearly dead, and although it had a collar, there was no name/number on it. This was on a small bypass with a housing estate backing onto the road and by the location it must have come from over there. I went and knocked on a few houses (must admit I was wondering if I found the owner, would they just think that I'd done it??) and eventually found someone who pointed me to a house which had several cats. It wasn't theirs, but the family thought they knew from the description whose cat it was. The chap went over to the road to see it, saw that it was the one they thought, and rang the owner who was a friend of his, who came to collect it.
I feel really sad that their cat had died, but sort of happy that at least the owners knew, and also fairly fortuitous that I stumbled across their friends, I suspect the bad news was better coming from their friends, than from a random stranger. I think if I were them, I'd rather know, so I think I did the right thing, although I do feel really bad that they might not have been able to handle the news. I felt sad all evening