This could sound morbid, and probably will, and it might very well seem more than a little nuts.
I don't care.
We took care of this stray cat in our back yard for the past year to maybe a year and a half. We've been doing that with her siblings and half-siblings (etc.) since we bought the house.
She was one of four in the litter. She and her one of her brothers were nearly identical tabbies, the only obvious difference being a slight variation in coloration--he was more tan-toned, and she more black-toned. For obvious reasons, we'd named them (unimaginatively) Blackie and Tanner. She stayed, and the rest moved on.
She was friendly and sweet; the best mother-cat Rox or I had ever seen. She never gave Baby (her only son) any attitude, just hung out with him and made sure that he was ok--she was extremely protective of him.
She even let him eat first.
She would schmooze all around the door frame, getting petted, and sniff our cats, rather than hiss or fight when they would occasionally hiss at her (and just maybe bat at her). Her seeming favorite over the summer was to lie down on this slab of cement which overhung the (now-dry) fish pond, beneath the wisteria (where she also slept at night, in its arbor). Likewise, over the fall she liked to lie down near the fence, in the sun; it wasn't really out of the wind at all, but she liked it, and so had earlier litters of her mother's.
She never did quite grasp the concept of a warm(ish) plastic bin with a towel in it.
Well, right before Thanksgiving, Baby seemed to have broken his left arm. Broken or not, something was definitely very wrong with it. He was more nearly domesticated than Blackie, but still wasn't quite there. We tried anyway.
We had him, I got a few logistical items arranged as Rox held him and shushed him, but then a thoroughly unexpected car alarm went off and he bolted. I followed him calmly and reassuringly, but he just wasn't buying it. He hobbled off to the shack, glancing back in an unnervingly Ol' Yeller kind of way (it felt foreshadowing at the time, and turned out to have been).
We never saw him again.
She was friendly and sweet; the best mother-cat Rox or I had ever seen. She never gave Baby (her only son) any attitude, just hung out with him and made sure that he was ok--she was extremely protective of him.
She even let him eat first.
She would schmooze all around the door frame, getting petted, and sniff our cats, rather than hiss or fight when they would occasionally hiss at her (and just maybe bat at her). Her seeming favorite over the summer was to lie down on this slab of cement which overhung the (now-dry) fish pond, beneath the wisteria (where she also slept at night, in its arbor). Likewise, over the fall she liked to lie down near the fence, in the sun; it wasn't really out of the wind at all, but she liked it, and so had earlier litters of her mother's.
She never did quite grasp the concept of a warm(ish) plastic bin with a towel in it.
Well, right before Thanksgiving, Baby seemed to have broken his left arm. Broken or not, something was definitely very wrong with it. He was more nearly domesticated than Blackie, but still wasn't quite there. We tried anyway.
We had him, I got a few logistical items arranged as Rox held him and shushed him, but then a thoroughly unexpected car alarm went off and he bolted. I followed him calmly and reassuringly, but he just wasn't buying it. He hobbled off to the shack, glancing back in an unnervingly Ol' Yeller kind of way (it felt foreshadowing at the time, and turned out to have been).
We never saw him again.
Due to the snow this weekend, we'd been a bit concerned about Blackie for the past couple of days, since she hadn't shown up for breakfast or dinner, but the strays here tend to do that from time to time, and she might have taken up residence with her boyfriend across the street.
She came by for breakfast today, though, and was favoring her left foot. A lot.
When I came home, she was obviously avoiding putting any weight on it.
After all of this time, we had succeeded in semi-domesticating her sufficiently that we could pet her, and even entice her to come a few steps into the house sometimes. This time, I simply hauled her gently in and closed the door. As I got her safely locked into the main bathroom, Rox called an after-hours vet.
After details and paperwork and waiting, the vet said that she had a compound break, but also advanced FIV (essentially equivalent to full-blown AIDS in a human). The upshot was that there was no real hope for her having a decent life at all--instead, a short life full of misery, w/ FIV, while healing from the break, followed by innumerable vet visits, being segregated from the other house cats while not even being a house cat herself...
We opted to have her euthanized.
Maybe it was the right thing to do. Hell, maybe it was the only moral thing to do. As far as I'm concerned... I killed her. It was fast--less than a minute. One moment she was lovingly licking my fingers, and nibbling a little bit, the next... she was asleep, and dead a moment later.
She wasn't a house cat, though that was our plan. Get her used to things, ease her into it, and then get her housed, safe, warm, fat, and happy. Rox was thinking that we could maybe get her with some Frontline (flea-stuff) this time.
She trusted me enough to let me put her into the cat carrier, to go to the vet, without flipping out on me physically, even though I had already dragged her into the alien environment of the house, and she was flipped out emotionally/psychologically over that idea. I'm just glad that she didn't understand English (I assume): I was cooing calming noises at her, telling her that we were taking her to the vet, and that soon everything would be ok, and that the vet would get her all fixed up, and we'd take care of her.
My eyes are burning, and my throat hurts.
She wasn't a house cat, though that was our plan. Get her used to things, ease her into it, and then get her housed, safe, warm, fat, and happy. Rox was thinking that we could maybe get her with some Frontline (flea-stuff) this time.
She trusted me enough to let me put her into the cat carrier, to go to the vet, without flipping out on me physically, even though I had already dragged her into the alien environment of the house, and she was flipped out emotionally/psychologically over that idea. I'm just glad that she didn't understand English (I assume): I was cooing calming noises at her, telling her that we were taking her to the vet, and that soon everything would be ok, and that the vet would get her all fixed up, and we'd take care of her.
My eyes are burning, and my throat hurts.
She seemed to really enjoy her last meal.
I'm posting it in memoriam of Blackie.
Please pardon the incorrectly conjugated Latin; perhaps I'll fix it later.
Blackie, ~Aug/Sep(?) 2009 - Tue 11 Jan 2011, ~21:12 CST.
We love you, and will miss you always.
Addendum: We buried her this evening (the evening of next day), in the back yard.
She was still in the box which the vet had brought her back out in. We chose to keep her thus, as a sort of coffin. We wrapped it in the towels from the carrier, put in the remainder of her last dinner, a toy koala which she had stolen from some neighbor's yard and played with for about the past year, some rose stems and a bit of the wisteria.
We had been going to bury her by the fence, where she and others would sun themselves over the winter, but the ground was too root-ridden and rife with stones (or cement?).
Instead, we buried her near the base of the wisteria (in the arbor of which she slept over the summer), in the same area as we had previously buried Moby (a large coi from the small fishpond), a (never named) goldfish(?) (also from the fishpond), Xi (our betta), and an algae-eater (which we had had only briefly, and whose name we have, embarrassingly, forgotten).
She at least has a pretty plot, and would maybe have appreciated it (assuming that cats can do so in the first place).
Addendum: We buried her this evening (the evening of next day), in the back yard.
She was still in the box which the vet had brought her back out in. We chose to keep her thus, as a sort of coffin. We wrapped it in the towels from the carrier, put in the remainder of her last dinner, a toy koala which she had stolen from some neighbor's yard and played with for about the past year, some rose stems and a bit of the wisteria.
We had been going to bury her by the fence, where she and others would sun themselves over the winter, but the ground was too root-ridden and rife with stones (or cement?).
Instead, we buried her near the base of the wisteria (in the arbor of which she slept over the summer), in the same area as we had previously buried Moby (a large coi from the small fishpond), a (never named) goldfish(?) (also from the fishpond), Xi (our betta), and an algae-eater (which we had had only briefly, and whose name we have, embarrassingly, forgotten).
She at least has a pretty plot, and would maybe have appreciated it (assuming that cats can do so in the first place).
Amo Mei:
Diced Schwann's chicken fingers
32g "Goldfish" (cracker-things)
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup cereal
1/2 cup sweet potatoes
1 can of fishy-something
1 comment:
sorry for your loss my friend
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