I Hate Big Unleashed Dogs (long, maudlin, pro-cat)

A little lame for a pit thread. And I’m feeling guilty but really I don’t know what else I should have done.

I lost my cat Max today. Long haired, grey tiger, friendly to a fault. ? - 2006. RIP.

I’ve been feeding strays at my back door since I’ve owned my house. Usually my cats leave enough leftovers to feed visitors, and I’ll supplement as I need to depending on the traffic. For the most part, they have no desire to come into the house. If a cat does insist over a long enough period of time, I find it difficult to resist and they are eventually adopted. Alger Hiss was the first to come in (long since gone to the Great Catnip Field). Jane and Sam came into the house in 1998, and are still very much here. And no cat has expressed that desire since them until Max came along in Spring 2005. He was sleeping under my front porch, and would greet me at the front door when I came home, because I looked remarkably like that sucker at the back door who always fed him. I kept hoping that he would move on, or that someone else would adopt him. It was not to be.

Finally I took him to the vet before Thanksgiving; I knew that I would be home for a long weekend, and could spend time with him while he adjusted to being inside. It turned out that he’d already been neutered, and that reinforced my suspicion that he may have already spent time with other people, and was used to their presence. He got all his shots, and the vet thought that he was in very good health. I really thought I was doing the right thing.

He seemed to adjust to being inside with little problem, although things were a bit uneasy with the other cats. He stayed close to me, though, and things went okay. He put on some weight, his fur got shiny, and he looked great.

Then, over the next few weeks, he seemed to be getting a bit testy. He would go back and forth between the front and back doors, and it was clear that he wanted to go outside. I realized that he needed to get that out of his system. Selfishly, I would wait for cold or rainy nights, and he would soon be at the front door to come back into the warm dry house. Most of the time I would see him just sitting on the wall in front of my house, watching the street. I would try to ignore his exit requests, but would have to give in from time to time. My hope was to knock them down to zero over this winter, especially if there was a substantial snow fall.

Tonight was no exception. I was putting the leftovers out for the strays, and he slipped out the back and was gone. I checked for him after a half hour, but no sign. So, it was the usual routine of checking for him at each commercial like a typical overprotective dad. It was at the end of the program that I heard a racket outside with the sound of a dog in hot pursuit of a prey. “That can’t be good” I thought, and went outside. A woman down the street asked me if I owned a big puffy cat. With a sinking heart, I followed her up the street where her son and his friends were bringing back Max on a shovel. There was no blood that I could see, so I think that his neck must have been broken. The boys weren’t sure what breed of dog they had; they thought maybe part bull mastiff, but whatever it was, it’s jaws were big enough to carry a 15 pound cat down the block. The boys were truly apologetic, as was the mother.

A woman across the street had seen the chase in action and had called the police, but the damage was done by the time they arrived. The officer took down our names for his report. I just don’t think that it’s in me to file a complaint, though. If the office files the report with the dog officer, that’s procedure and out of my hands, but for me to initiate something is to deliberately try to single out my neighbors for some punishment that will gain me nothing. They may have been careless in letting the dog get loose, but there was nothing malicious about it, and they were truly upset that it had happened.

And I’m feeling guilty, too. If Max had stayed outside, my only guilt would be in that I hadn’t taken him and maybe spared him from this. Ironic, huh? But I do wonder whether he had become more trusting and less wary after coming inside, and whether those defences might have saved him. And it was clear that he just wasn’t ready to be a full-time inside cat, although he was headed in that direction.

I know it seems to be hypocritical to let a cat outside, and then complain about unleashed dogs, but I’m in a city, and an unleashed dog just has more capacity for damage than any number of cats.

Aw, crap, I’m just venting, and I know it sounds strange to get attached to a pet in this short a period of time, but I’ve had a warm purring 15 pound weight on my ankles at night for the last five or six weeks, and I’m really going to miss him.

Heck, I get attached to my feline newcomers within hours of them moving in. Nothing strange about you missing Max, nothing at all.

Seems to me the only mistake you amde was in giving in to his demands to be let out – a mistaken kindness that perhaps made his adjustment to being indoors harder. I’ve read that giving intermittent rewards for a particular behavior can actually reinforce it more firmly than consistent rewards. So if his asking and asking and asking to go out got rewarded now and then, it would encourage him to go on asking. After all, he’d persisted before in the face of denial, and look, it worked!

That said, cats are amazingly fast little buggers when they want to get by you. Could well be that he’d have gotten out no matter what you did.

Both you and the dog-owning neighbors handled this sad event well, as responsible people should, if that’s any comfort to you.

Sorry about Max. It just reinforces my decision never to let my cats outside. Now I have to go distribute scritches in memory of Max.

As another cat-person, I am very sorry for your loss. Nothing like losing one of our friends to make us realize how much we miss that weight that hogs all the blankets at night. :frowning:

:o Err. Well… The good thing about not having posted this in the pit is that there is less face to lose when I have to eat some of my words. :o

First, thank you for your kind thoughts. And for not pointing out that

should have been “its jaws”. And I did preview, too. ::sigh::

And now it gets bizarre.

After a rather sleepless night, I went to feed the strays outside with the leftovers. And Max came over from next door with an indignant meow and wanted his breakfast. Double take doesn’t describe it. He’s eating now, and will doubtless be settling down for a long winter’s nap.

I can only offer that the whole sordid thing last night happened under street lights, and I was already prepared to accept that it was my cat because he was out. I now have an unidentified cat in a box in my garage that looks quite a bit like Max. I think that it may be a stray that has been around the neighborhood for a few years, but I had never noticed how closely they resemble one another.

EddyTeddyFreddy, sound words. This guy ain’t never goin’ out again. I was thinking about leaving him out all night some time just so that he would remember how good he had it, so I can cross that off the list. And yes, now I am especially grateful that I acted responsibly with my neighbors. :slight_smile:

Well, who am I to question fate? Thanks again, folks.

Several years ago, a stray, whom we named Maya, adopted us as her Keepers. She’s a fairly average looking cat, but has an amazing personality, so needless to say, we really value being in a position to feed her and provide her with a home and all the attention she so desires. I made the mistake early on by letting her outside (same behavior as mentioned by the OP), and twice she simply disappeared (she refuses to tell us where she was–we suspect she was once on vacation, and the other time, she was probably locked in someone’s storage shed for awhile). That being said, she’s Never Going Outside Again In Her Life. Ever.

When she was gone, we searched the neighborhood. It was simply amazing the number of (stray) cats who were in our area who looked almost identical to Maya. We assume, that since she was a stray, she came from one of the numerous litters breeding in our area. It doesn’t surpise me that you’ve got another cat, Plynck, who looks like Max. They’re probably related somehow.

I’d suggest keeping your eyes open for posters of someone missing a cat.

I’m really glad you found your cat and wish you the best of luck in keeping him in :).

I lost my cat, Mojo, last year to antifreeze poisoning. I had Mojo from a tiny kitten and from the time he was about 3 months old, he wanted outside. He just didn’t want to go outside- he tore up windows, blinds and spent endless time scratching on doors and banging cupboards to make his extreme displeasure known. There was no explanation for it, he was neutered early, never allowed outside unless he connived his way out the door or window, etc. I tried my best to keep him in, but he would get out anyways at least twice a week. A week before he died, we had a client bring in a mutilated cat- she’d been hit by a car and they said the same thing- she was an indoor cat that tried to get out all the time. I went home swearing I would double my efforts to keep him in. He got out one more time, waiting at the kitchen door window he would simply drop himself right out of the house. Three days later he was in extreme kidney failure and had to be put to sleep. He was just two years old :frowning: and just the most beautiful silver tabby and white cat- he had one bright green and one bright blue eye. He was a bit of a butthead but I adored him :(.

Now I have a new kitten, Milton/Fred (my boyfriend and I can’t agree on names and he’s almost 9 months old!) and thankfully he is very happy to live his outdoor life through windows. My old cat Wily is the same, although he doesn’t mind a supervised dirt bath occasionally.

My Og, Plynck, the kitties really do have nine lives. But don’t ever let him out again. Who knows, he might be on #9 now…

Wow! What fabulous good news!

Are you sure there’s still a dead cat in your garage? Maybe your house was built over an Indian burial ground, or something.

Paging Erwin SchrodingerPlynck has your cat.

:smiley: The probability is good. It would be even better if I changed my name to Planck…

I love a happy ending; especially when kitties are involved. Don’t open that box in the garage. Just bring it to a proper burial place and be done with it (checking first, of course, that Max is in the house before you go)

Smokey only goes out when in the carrier (claw trimmings, vet visits). Too many things can happen to outdoor cats. None of them good. She has no interest in going out. In fact, when I open the door, she runs the other way, lest the big bad outdoor world come in and get her. I think it’s because of how she was found. She does love window sills, tho, and happily chatters at the birds in my peach tree.