I learned recently that in my youth I was responsible for the death of thousands of kittens. Sorry.
I bought a house in June. It has a laundry chute, with the upstairs opening behind a cabinet door about 3’ up. We have a cat whose mission it is to open and investigate any cabinet or otherwise enclosed space.
After two separate instances of “Gee, has anybody seen Engineer Cat? Not since last night?” and opening the downstairs drawer to a mighty SPROING of twelve-hour-confined cat… we taped the upstairs cabinet door shut.
Engineer Cat doesn’t seem to have been harmed by his adventures in any way.
wolfman, my husband accidentally did that to his cat when she was a kitten, too. Max was about 100% pure caterwauling energy as a kitten, and he wanted to get away from her for a break. He raced her down the hallway, and slammed the door to keep her out of the bedroom. Unfortunately he didn’t realize how close behind him she was, and she ran headfirst into the bedroom door. She didn’t seem to have any permanent damage - just shook her head and raced off the other direction.
All these stories (while sad) are actually making me feel better about killing my pet bunny as a young kid. My family thinks it’s just a funny story, too.
About 30 years ago I was indirectly responsible for the crushing of a kitten. I was leading a pony into the barn where I was working, and the pony brought a hoof down squarely on the head of one of the numerous barn kittens. The pony didn’t notice, but I still remember it clearly.
When I was about 4, I thought that cats could swim. Let’s just say our kitten didn’t make it out of the pool. I still feel guilty about it today. And yes, my family too likes to share this story while I feel terrible about it.
This is the funniest/most depressing thread I’ve seen in a while.
I’m so torn!
Would it be wrong for me to speculate on why cats have so many kittens? (Spares…)
You may not want to read this if you were afraid of where this thread would go.
That’s your warning.
My parents had many cats and several dogs while I was growing up. They never really seemed to get the whole responsibility angle of pet ownership though. I still cringe whenever they get a new pet. They aren’t terrible people, but they just look at animals as being… less than human worth. I don’t know if that makes any sense.
My mother is kinder and gentler. That is why I got put on the cat duty. A.k.a. clean the cat out of the car’s engine belts. Cats love warm spaces. Always sound your horn. I felt okay about this though, because it taught me to take care of any tough animal situations rationally. Like ending a slow death because it is kinder in some situations.
My stepfather on the other hand, has killed several of our animals(and a few that didn’t belong to us) in front of me. The most painful was a kitten that was the runt of the litter. I had spent two months feeding and giving special attention to this fellow. I even went camping with him one night.
My father, sister and I were watching a special on Chuck Norris(no lie or joke) when I was about eight years old. The cat scratched my 3 year old sister’s hand. My stepfather slammed the kitten not on the carpet, but on a very small tile area in front of the door.
Every time I see Chuck Norris, or a tile entrance I get a weird sad feeling. I know that the whole Chuck thing could seem like an internet joke, but you really do remember stuff like that while watching a cat writhe in pain with a broken back, bleeding and defecating. I can’t really forgive something so meaningless and cruel.
I now only take on animals that I can rescue, afford, and love. So in the long run, these terrible situations made a champion of animal protection.
That motherfucker. Makes me wish he would do some shit like that where I could see him.
I agree with your sentiments Ogre, but you can’t really change a person like that. Well unless you’re willing to do a great deal of physical harm, and I can’t/won’t ever be that person.
I have let him know how wrong it was, and how much it affected me. He seems to understand that, but it hasn’t changed who he is.
I physically took one of my cats from three guys who were mistreating her. I assure you, I have no problem with it. One of the things that make me snap and go bananas is cruelty to something weak and helpless.
I guess what I mean to say is that I am not going to do anything to my stepfather over something that happened in the past. I was too young to do anything at the time.
He did threaten to throw one of our crazy cats across the room if it scratched him about 2 years ago. I told him if he touched the cat at all that my girlfriend would kill him and I’d be helping her do it.
We also have a small dog that loves to bark at strangers. When people think it’s funny to taunt him, I think it’s funny to grab my old five pound metal baseball bat. Haven’t had to use it yet since it’s presence is fairly intimidating.
When I was about 10 I stepped up on a rail to retrieve a pail from over a small fence and my work book stepped back down on a kitten’s head. It flopped like a dying fish on shore for a good 10 minutes, I was hysterical, and my father didn’t seem to give a shit about either it or me; he was just mad that I’d dropped the pail in the aisle.
Erm.
Yeah, that’s a lot more trauma than just a dead kitten, isn’t it.
One actual death, one close call.
The close call was when I was home from college. My sister had just gotten a new kitten–a tiny little ball of fluff, but rapidly growing. One day, when I was finishing my last minute primping after a shower, I heard a series of desperate little mews, and a thumping sound.
I followed the noise into the kitchen, and found the kitten with her head stuck between the back slats in one of the chairs. Her head was too big to pass through the slats at the bottom, and the poor things were pinching her neck. My sister came up around the same time. We comforted her to get her to stop thrashing and called for my dad, because we couldn’t figure out how to get her out.
It involved lifting her to where the slats were broader. Duh. But we were panicked. I still think that, if we hadn’t heard her, the poor Suki would’ve thrashed around until she broke her neck.
As for the actual death. . .I was leaving the parking lot at work, and I saw a turtle crossing the aisle. I carefully swerved around it, then pulled to the side, so that I could put it in my car and drive it to the pond (assuming, of course, that asphalt is not their native habitat).
The big red SUV behind me, however, did not see the turtle. By the time I got there, he’d been squished. But he was still alive, and moving. His guts were coming out of his shell, though. He was going to die.
So I went to the back of my car, took out the sword that I had, and used it to break the neck/crush the skull. I got enough velocity going that it was just two quick strikes before he was gone.
Best thread title/username combo evar.
LOL, a sword?! If I’d seen a guy in the road bashing a turtle’s head in with a sword, I just don’t know what I’d do.
I have a story kind of like that, with a better ending. I was driving along a fairly high speed road here, and I came across a mother duck with all her ducklings waddling along behind her on the road. I slowed down to let them get across and get off the road, and instead of getting off the road, they started waddling down the road in front of my car! I didn’t want to take off and risk someone else mowing them down, so I just crept along with the ducks in front of my car and my hazard blinkers on. Finally someone stopped in front of me and we were able to chase the ducks off the road into the bush.
My daughter stepped on a kitten when she was around twelve or so. She’s twenty now and it still gives her nightmares. The worst part was she was all alone and had to try to help it but there was nothing she could do. By the time we got home it was gone, and she was hysterical.
Hell it still brings ME nightmares to think about what my child had to go through.
I was driving through west Texas one morning several years ago. It was early, still dark, and I was driving on a state highway which was curvy and not lit. All of a sudden a rabbit decided to end it all and darted out if front of my car. I swerved and narrowly missed it. Some minutes later it happened again. And again. Dart. Swerve. Miss. Finally, white-knuckles gripping the steering wheel, I decided that swerving across a dark, winding, unlit road was endangering not only myself, but potentally others as well. I would no longer swerve to miss a suicidal bunny.
I became an ace that morning.
This isn’t exactly kitten quality, but one time as I was driving down the road, a bird didn’t scurry out of the way as fast as I had anticipated, and I ran over it. I looked out the rear-view mirror to see many pieces of feather flying out from the rear of the car just like in a cartoon.