I'm torn. I've thought about this mid sized grey cat for weeks, months. He's been perched outside of a house a block away from mine. We walk by it everyday on our way to school. The cat hardly moved. It was being fed, but it was sick. I knew the homeowners had grown attached to it, there would be cans of cat food in the morning, by the afternoon half eaten cans remained, filled with flies. The cat would eat and go back and perch on a sliver of fence. It rained? The cat stayed.
It was perched on a half inch fence, a fence only three feet tall. There were places along the small fence that were thicker and once he found those, weeks ago, he stayed there. In the same spot. Throwing up, defecating, same spot, every day.
It tore me up! My son told me one morning, Mom, is his tummy getting bigger? It was. The cat was in pain.
I put in a request for animal cruelty yesterday morning. Probably around this same time. I did put the address of the homeowner, I also put in my details. By the afternoon, the cat was not there. I didn't want to think it had already been picked up. It had been 4 hours, max. My worry, was that upon the cat's eventual death, it would rot there. It didn't deserve that. A slow, painful, certain death.
As we turned the corner to come home after school, I told my kids I had decided to contact the city for help with the cat. My kid's talked about how sad it looked. My son reminded me about the big stomach. He touched my shoulder and told me I did the right thing by getting it help.
This morning was the truth. Had it taken hours to get him help? I'm not naïve. I know they probably will/have put it to death. Did I want that? Never. But did it deserve to humainley leave this Earth and not feel pain? absolutely.
It wasn't there. The cat was gone.
It's 8:58am, just an hour after dropping off my kids and I had to write all this down. This is the type of thoughts that cross my mind. The cat, the perching, sadness, relief.
Little Kitty Cat,
I love you.