The events so far this week are the reason this place is neither mundane nor pointless and I’ve never felt more so than I do right now.
May we have some better news to get us through our bad news, our sad news, the things that make us cry.
I’m feeling all this a bit more than usual – one of my cats, my big orange and white striped sweet boy cat Clyde was taken by a coyote Sunday night.
Ten years ago I rescued Clyde – he didn’t have a home, though I could never imagine how anyone could throw out a perfectly wonderful and adorable cat like he was.
The only bad thing about him was that he did not want to stay in the house and he would run out the door at every opportunity. Which is what happened this time. I came in the house with an armload of lugggage and he ran outside. And that was that.
I live in the dadburn suburbs but increasingly even not so far off in-town neighborhoods here in North Georgia are having to deal with Wild Damn Kingdon, coyotes and foxes and bears and what all. There’s even been cougar and bobcat sightings.
It’s only Tuesday and I feel like enough, too much, stop, stop already.
Well now I’m torn. Before I read the subject of your lousy week, I was going to pop in and post pictures of my new kitten, Nosferatu but it seems inappropriate now. I hope your week improves, Tuba. I’m sorry about your kitty.
I’m so sorry for your loss. There are not words enough. While no one can replace Clyde, soon, you’ll rescue someone else and partly fill that empty spot.
OK- Well, I was at the vet’s last week getting some doggy meds and there were a bunch of black/charcoal/white kitties there for adoption. Blah blah cats- I’ve never been a giant kitty fan, but my husband had a cat when we got together (a complete and utter bitch of a cat) and she really grew on me. She lived to be 18 and in the last years of her life that complete attack cat let me cut her nails bathe and groom her and was always around wanting loving. My husband would say she “hates to love you and loves to hate you”, which was true.
So anyway, she passed away 2 years ago and I’ve been chewing on having another cat in the house. We have 2 dogs right now- Foster (my rescued terrier mix) and Rocket, our black german shepherd. We really don’t need another animal at all. But that one kitty in the cage…long charcoal grey/black fur, little tufts on hair in his ears…he was calling to me. I watched him for a while and he was a butt kicker, smacking around all of his cagemates and just being a real pisser.
I did all of the applications and picked up my kitty on Saturday. I named him Nosferatu and call him No No Kitty, No No Bad Kitty or Nosy for short. Behold, the power of kitten pictures
I had to put one of my foster kittens down yesterday, on my birthday. I had called him Smeagol. He had been in a litter of five, one died shortly after arrival and he and the deceased one looked to be a week younger than the others, a possibility if mom bred again after tge initial breeding. I had tube fed, then syringe fed him for about a week until he started eating on his own. Someone else took the other kittens who were able to eat on their own right away. I got them back a couple weeks ago and Smeagol was happy to be with other kittens, he’d play and snuggle with them. When I fed them he was always in there eating and I made sure he didn’t get pushed out. They always had dry kitten food available and I fed them canned food a few times a day.
But something wasn’t right with him, he wasn’t growing. I came home yesterday and went to feed him and found him lateral and gasping. It’s possible he was hypoglycemic but he was dying and likely had other problems so I put him to sleep. I later found someone had diarrhea and possibly vomited food in the room they were in which may have been too much for his little body to take. I felt his abdomen afterwards and he had one big kidney that I could feel so I think he had congenital problems likely from being a preemie or runt. I had concerns with the possibility of him surviving because of his size I just thought we had gotten over the hump. Unfortunately, I never took his picture.
I’m sorry about your cat,** Tuba**, and I wholeheartedly agree, bad times need to be over now, and let the good times roll. I’m SO ready. It’s been a rough month.
I was out walking one summer day and was going past the elementary school when I heard this crying. The school had some big concrete planters on the side of the building and inside one of them was this tiny black ball of fluff meowing up a storm. It was in the 90s already and he wouldn’t have lasted very long; they must have just dumped him off. I figure he was about three weeks old. I could hold him in the palm of my hand. When I did he snuggled up next to me and started purring. And that, of course, was the end of that story.
We called him Faith until all of a sudden he had a huge set of balls (couldn’t tell for the long black fur, etc.) and then we called him Fabian.
He was all attitude – for such a tiny cat he projected ten feet tall – the dogs were all scared of him and most of the other cats stepped aside when he came through.
But he could also be very very sweet and when he was in the mood for it he would cuddle and snuggle and purr like nobody’s business.
The first time Clyde saw him he fell in love with him too – Clyde was about a year old then and I was afraid he would beat up on this tiny kitten. Clyde came up to him, looked at him for a second, and then began to wash the kitten’s head. Fabian allowed him to wash him and then licked Clyde on top of his head and they curled up and went to sleep. And that’s how it was. They were close as brothers for always; they were one another’s tribe.
Fabian was feisty and independent and even when he was full grown he was no bigger than a minute. He must have been the runt of the litter and started out life fighting for everything.
He did that all of his life. I’m sad to tell you that our time with him was cut short. We had some criminal neighbors with a pit bull that they liked to turn loose for fun. That was nearly a year ago and I’m still not reconciled.
I pray for god’s gentle mercy on all of us and the children of our hearts.
Thanks for sharing, BoBettie; he’s a gorgeous boy.
Somehow the most hopeless cases are the ones that get the closest to our hearts. I’m sure you did everything you could for him but he never really had a good chance. It’s like that sometimes and what you had to do, while the hardest thing to do, was the most loving thing in the necessity. You made his life as good as you could for as long as you could and that is beautiful.
You’re a better person than I am. I hope that something really awful happens to people like your neighbor. Not to his dog- what could you expect from the dog, with an owner like that?
A bit later the dog came to the attention of the authorities and was removed and put down.
It was not the dog’s fault – it’s the fault of the people who aimed him like a weapon at the rest of the world.
That dog killed several cats in the neighborhood before that happened, though – including two kittens playing on the lawn of my next-door neighbor.
As for the owners of the dog, they will answer to a higher justice if not a governmental authority, although I hear there’s some investigation going on for other things. The wheels of justice do grind slowly. I hope to see some of them under the jail at some point.
