What Do You Do When You Kill A Cat?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Short version: If you ran over a cat with a collar in your own street (in a safe and peaceful neighbourhood), would you try to find the owners, or just leave it in the gutter?

Long version:

It wasn’t me.

We were visiting the in-laws when my sister-in-law ran in, upset, rambling about hitting a cat with her car and could someone help her see if it’s alright. She ran back out and I followed, and the rest of the family trailed behind. We get out into the street and there’s a dead cat (with a collar) in the gutter just two houses up from their home. SIL was very upset (she’s only just started driving, and she’s also an animal lover) but it couldn’t be helped, the cat ran right out from behind a parked car in front of her and she wasn’t able to avoid it. No one seemed quite sure who the cat belonged to, and the whole family started to head back to the house. I said we should see if it belonged to one of the neighbours and there was much shuffling of feet and comments about “Never seen it before”, “Could have come from anywhere” and “Just leave it”. I walked to the house across the road and headed up the drive but my MIL called out that it didn’t belong to the man who lived there so I came back. Younger SIL suggested that she thought it belonged to the people in the next house down. The rest of the family went back in their house. A crow approached the corpse with interest, and I chased it away and then went and spoke to the people my SIL suggested might be the owners. It was their cat (Leo), and they were upset but they also were understanding that it was an accident (the lady even said the cat shouldn’t have been outside and she was sorry she hadn’t kept him in) and she seemed a bit grateful that I’d come and told her what happened. We helped them move the body and went home. In-laws then mentioned that the cat had been hanging around for the last few months.

(This is a long intro for a poll, I know, but I want the backstory to be clear.)

Now, IMHO, the loss of a pet is sad enough but it’s even sadder just to find the body on the road and not know if the person responsible even stopped to see if it was ok, or if they just roared off. My in-laws live in a cul-de-sac, there are only about ten houses at their end of the street and as I’ve indicated, they already knew at least one of their neighbours wasn’t the owner. In this situation, would you knock on at least a couple of doors to try to let them know what happened? Was I unreasonable to expect them to make a token effort to try to find out who it belonged to? I’m just really uncomfortable that they were prepared to walk off and leave it there for the family to find but maybe I’m being unreasonable?

2

You are not being unreasonable. I would do anything I could to find the owners.

3

I’m with you as well. If it was my cat, I’d (well, I’d have kept her inside, but beyond that), I’d want to know about it as soon as possible. Even beyond the emotional stuff (which I agree with), I’d much rather take care of it quickly than find it when it’s been crow fodder, bloated and stiff or explodes with intestinal gasses.

4

I’d try to find the owners. Knowing that the cat is dead is preferable to not knowing, and hoping that it’ll show up. Also, it’s much harder to deal with a corpse that’s not fresh, should the owners come across their pet several days after it has died.

5

I can relate to this one too well.

My husband and I were heading out of town on Sunday evening. Out from the weeds along the side of the road ran 2 cats…kittens, really. They looked to be only about 6 months old or so. We didn’t even see them until it was too late. He ran over both of them at once, and they were dead by the time we got out of the car to check on them. One was grey and one was black. It upset my husband a bit, because, well, killing an animal like that is rather stressful and sad, especially if you’re an animal lover. Even if it was an accident.

This stretch of road is on the outskirts of the town we live in, and there are only 3 houses on that bit of road. No other houses for about 1 mile or so on either end. So, we went to all 3 of the houses, to try to find the owners of the cats. No one admitted to owning them.
So, I brought them home and buried them in the backyard, amongst our beloved pets that have passed on.

We figured, hell, it’s the least we could do, and it is pretty damn sad that no one would even admit to owning these beautiful kittens, and they deserved some sort of burial, since they had no other humans that gave a shit about them! I suppose they could have been wild, but I don’t know. They were too well fed and too shiny to have been wild. I could be wrong, though.

My husband was also a bit shaken because one of the kittens reminded him of his cat, Baggins, that he had found in the parking lot of a truck stop in northern Ohio last year, on a freezing cold, snowy, icy night.
He picked up the starving, wet, shivering kitten…which fit in the palm of his hand at the time… and took it to his semi, dried it off, gave it some of his soft flannel shirts to sleep on, got it warmed it up, bought kitten chow, water, new food dishes, a new litterbox with all the fixin’s, and some toys for it to play with.
When he came home that weekend, he called our vet, and took it in to be checked out, got it shots and all that good stuff (neutered too, when it was finally old enough), and it has been his best pal ever since… now his ‘truck cat’ goes with him on his runs in the semi all the time. The cat worships my husband and is very, very happy in the semi with him! They both come home on weekends, by the way. :cool:

This is why people should spay and neuter their pets! So shit like this doesn’t have to happen! Also, if you have a pet, please don’t let it run free outside, so another person doesn’t have to go through this…or, more importantly, the animal doesn’t have to suffer and die like that!

6

That story about your husband is really cool. He sounds like a really sweet guy. And I thought all semi drivers were big hairy dudes that get in bar fights. :slight_smile:

7

I’d try to find the owner and tell them what happened. I’d probably also cry, because the dead cat would remind me of my own much-loved kitties. If I couldn’t find an owner, I’d try to find some alternative to leaving the cat’s body on the road- nobody else should have to see or smell that. I couldn’t bury it in my yard (I live in an apartment and don’t have a yard), but I’d try to do something.

This needed to be repeated.

8

I’d try to find the owner. When I was a little girl, my dog got hit in the road and my mom still tells people “And they didn’t even bother to stop!”

That being said, when I was in college and my roomate was driving (she was an awful driver but this wasn’t her fault) on a busy but narrow road a beaglish sort of adolescent dog ran in front of her, and she missed him… but then when he got to the other side of the road he turned back around and made another pass, and she hit him. Crunch. Looking back, I’m sure she didn’t think about it that way but she definately would have gotten rear ended even if she’d had time to stop. I wanted her to pull over, but she didn’t want to and there wasn’t any space to do it anyway. Still, if it had been me in charge I like to think I’d have hit a side street and gone back. I just know it was some little kid’s cherished pet. It definately had a collar. I’m getting upset thinking about it - it’s been years, but I still remember being afraid to get out of the car in case I saw something on the wheels or something. It was terrible. Makes me want to go home and hug my dog and my cat.

9

Thank you, shizaru and Anne Neville. Yeah, my husband is a big, hairy dude, but he’s got more of a soft-spot for animals than he does for most people. He IS a really sweet guy. He’s got to be, because he has put up me for 20+ years! :smiley:

I do believe in trying to find the owner of a hurt or killed animal, cazzle. It’s only right.

I am repeating this, what I posted earlier:

This is why people should spay and neuter their pets! So shit like this doesn’t have to happen! Also, if you have a pet, please don’t let it run free outside, so another person doesn’t have to go through this…or, more importantly, the animal doesn’t have to suffer and die like that!

10

Last fall, my then-17-year-old cat got out of the house for the first time in his life. I went through a horrible 18 days before someone found him, malnourished and dehydrated, but otherwise ok. I remember at the time thinking that if he were dead, I’d much rather know about it than never knowing what happened to him.

I was in touch with the people at Animal Control, who pick up dead animals in the road, and notify their owners. If you hit an animal and can’t locate the owner, at least notify Animal Control, so they can add the animal’s description to their data base.

11

I am kind of embarrassed to admit that I thought this was going to be a thread about masturbation.

12

This happened to me once, must be about 20 years ago since my daughter was an infant at the time. Driving through the neighborhood where I was living at the time. The cat ran out from behind a parked car and I didn’t see it soon enough to react. I went to the nearest house and knocked on the door. It wasn’t her cat but she knew the owner across the street and said the news would be better coming from someone she knew. She said she’d take care of disposing of the cat too. Nice lady.

My dog was hit and killed by a car after escaping from the yard. She was about 2 miles from home. I probably would have never found her if the man who hit her hadn’t taken her collar and called me. I’m very grateful he called.

13

You could always put up a sign.

14

I would definately try to see if I could locate the owners.

When our previous dog was hit by a car, the person* who hit him had the good sense to locate us and we were grateful that we found out about our dog’s death that way, rather than locate the body on the road.

My friend was not so fortunate. One of her cats had gone missing for a couple of weeks, and she suspected that it might have been hit since it usually stayed quite close to the house. It wasn’t confirmed until my mother-in-law told her that she’d seen a dead cat quite similiar in colour and markings to that of my friends. I have no idea what happened to the corpse.

  • The person who hit our dog was actually our vet. While it was terrible at the time, looking back, it’s funny to look back now, how ironic it was.
15

I love cats. I have a cat. I laughed my ass off at this picture. I’m not sure what that means.

16

I’m trying, I really am…

Does God masturbate every time I kill a cat?

[RIGHT]I’m a bad man.[/RIGHT]

17

Yes, please do tell the owners.

Our lovely Chow Chow Jericho got out one day - we’re still not sure how, either. My stepfather suspects someone let him out, because there was no obvious other way out. The gate was normally locked but the lock had rusted and couldn’t be closed properly, and my stepfather hadn’t yet bought a new one.

He got hit. This wasn’t bad enough. He then crawled up onto someone’s front porch. Jericho had a collar on with a phone number on it. If he was in pain and therefore not approchable, a call to the police or SPCA would have been in order.

However, we found out (and the guy admitted it) that the person who’s porch he crawled onto just took a big shop broom and pushed him off the porch. He ended up getting hit again. The guy then took it upon himself to swear at my mother for “letting your dog in my yard.” My stepfather had to be physically restrained from going over there.

By the time we found Jericho, his pelvis was shattered, his jaw was broken in half down the middle, he was cut all over and bleeding. We were inconsolable when the vet put him down.

And not one single person who hit him stopped. We only know what happened because the asshole who shoved him back out into the street told us he was hurt when he did it, and the vet reckoned that he got hit twice because of the way his injuries were.

So yeah, if you hit an animal stop. If you’ve killed the animal, try to find its owner. My three kitties and my dog mean the world to me, I’d want to know. (That said, the kitties are indoor and the dog is in a fenced yard or on a leash…)

Cheers,
G

18

Hide it under a bush or rug.

19

Maaaake…soup?

What?

I live in Tennessee.

IT’S LEGAL!

:smiley: :stuck_out_tongue:

20

A few years ago a friend of mine found a dead cat on th road outside our house - she was terrified that it was our cat, and didn’t want to come to the door to tell us in case my Dad had a heart attack and died from the shock, so she moved the dead cat onto the grass verge so it wouldn’t get pizza-ed by passing cars …

(It wasn’t our cat, and my Dad has a heart condition…no idea who’s cat it was)