There are quite a few outdoor / feral kitties in my mom’s neighborhood. One of them had started to hang around her place in the past couple of weeks. She named him Stanley. Her husband, who is NOT a animal person, had just recently come to appreciate Stanley’s cuteness and affection. They even bought him a collar a week or so ago.
This morning, my mom couldn’t get Stanley to come to her for breakfast, but she had to leave for work so she couldn’t sit around and wait for him. She got a call from her husband just a little while ago with the sad news. One of their neighbors saw Stanley get attacked by a large dog, and he didn’t survive. So, my mom has to bury her kitty when she gets home.
I hate hearing about stuff like that, but I hate witnessing it even more Many years ago (mid-late 80s) a friend and I were walking through our neighbourhood’s back streets when we came upon a guy working on his car, and his dog, who was busy chasing a little kitten around the front yard. The guy was trying to call his dog to heel, but it was entirely too busy to listen. All we could do was just stand there, mouths agape, and watch it all unfold.
Without going into detail, it caught the kitten, then laid its carcass at its master’s feet, who was none too pleased about this “gift,” rewarding the dog for its generosity with a swift kick.
This is the main reason we only have indoor cats from now on.
First we lost our mother & daughter Siamese to Feline Leukemia. Then we lost our beautiful rescued cat, Rocky, to Feline Immune Deficiency. Not to mention the miscellaneous bites and scratches that of course heal up outside, leave infection inside, and require an expensive trip to the vet. All because of encounters with neighborhood strays and ferals.
expected lifetime for a inside, “owned” cat: 7-20 years.
Don’t even start me on kitten survival rates for inside versus outside cats … I’m sure a DVM or VT can pop in on that depressing statistic.
Look, when a cat is outside, it joins a food chain/hostile environment, which includes victims (birds, bigs, rodents, ,) and predators (cars, people, dogs, coyotes, …).
Even if you insist on an outside or an inside/outside cat, take precautions: shots, spay/neuter …
He looks exactly like my cat, although she has white feet. It’s one of the nicest colorations ever. I hope your mom is ok, that’s really not something you want to come home to.
It was probably a stray dog (Mom doesn’t live in the nicest of areas). She had only just recently decided to “adopt” Stanley and hadn’t gotten him to the clinic yet. Her husband wasn’t too sure about having a cat inside the house - before Stanley he had NO interest in pets whatsoever. Now, he understands that if they’re going to have a cat, it will have to stay inside, possibly with supervised visits outdoors.
My mom is just flabbergasted at how hard her husband is taking this. He was always very gruff about pets, and only recently admitted that incidents like this have hardened his heart. He’s such a softie that he’d rather not have a pet than have one and lose it to an accident. Mom’s pretty sure they’ll adopt another kitty (for an indoor life) after a while. They’re going on a week-long vacation in October, so it will probably be after that.
