HillKat
October 18, 2010, 5:21pm
21
drpepper:
You have done and are doing a wonderful thing for this cat: caring and providing for it, and, as others have said, you can never go wrong trying to do the right thing.
I agree with your sentiments of wanting to catch her to euthanize her if nothing else, rather than letting her suffer. If this is not possible I will just leave you with this thought:
A few weeks ago there was some sort of thread (that I only vaguely remember) that posed the question [paraphrasing]: are cats capable of learning tricks and they just refuse, or are they too stupid?
When I ran that one by my husband, his immediate response was, “Well cats certainly aren’t stupid - they might not do what we want them to do but they most certainly are smart animals”. It’s true, and sometimes even the stubborn feral ones will instinctively do what’s right for them in the whole philosophical scheme of things; so if you truly can’t catch the cat to deal with it humanely, rest in the knowledge that maybe this is really the cat’s choice to die this way (I say this as someone who is a big believer in putting animals out of their pain the most humane way possible when it needs to be done).
Thank you! This is a very comforting thought, I’d dallied with it, but don’t want to rationalize being unnecessarily cruel. It’s helpful that someone else would touch on that thought also.
HillKat:
I appreciate your last line. My heart is broken watching her. I really don’t have the heart to deal with another failed attempt to grab her. She appears to be resting as comfortably as one can under the circumstances…she is in a heated bed at floor level with padding below to insulate her from the ground chill. She has food and water available and is in a protected environment. She does not show any signs of pain beyond extreme weakness, which would be expected considering she eats very very little.
My word. You’ve gone out of your way to do as much as humanly possible and then some. A heated bed? You’re a saint in any cat’s eyes.