About 6 years ago, my beautiful kitty-baby went to live with a family friend, as I couldn’t bring him with me when I went to university. At the time he was 13; now he was 19, blind, deaf, and arthritic. He was the friendliest little guy, and his adoptive Daddy (a good friend of my Mom’s) absolutely loved him and doted on him.
The week before I moved out to Edmonton, I went to visit both the human and the kitty. I asked the human (the nicest man in the world), to please not make any expensive, heroic measures to try to save Ki when he started hurting or his quality of life was deteriorating. He was very old for a kitty (we got him in 1993, when I was 9, still living in the Yukon), and we agreed that as long as he wasn’t suffering and still (mostly) able to make the litter box, he would just continue being spoiled rotten.
This morning, the kitty and the human were outside together, when the human went in to answer the phone. Within 15 seconds, he said, he heard a strange noise, and looked out to see that a neighbour’s dog had entered the yard, and had already killed my baby boy.
My 19 year old, blind, deaf, arthritic baby was killed IN HIS OWN YARD.
This was not the first time this dog had injured a neighbourhood pet, but the owner’s had paid the vet bill and asked that they not be reported, as they stated it had never happened before. At least 5 cats have been killed by this dog, it has now come to light.
I am heartbroken. Heartbroken that my baby’s final moments were possibly scary for him. That he was not able to just go to sleep one day in the sunshine and not wake up. That my friend has had to deal with the brutal death of the kitty that was, in truth, his as well. And that he had to tell my Mom.
I am also heartbroken that this dog’s humans continued to let this dog off-leash, unsupervised, free to roam the neighbourhood. It was not this dog’s fault that he was not taught that cats were not prey, that his territory did NOT include other people’s yards. In the end. another family is going to lose their pet.
But you know what the bylaw inspector told my friend when he spoke to him after speaking with the dog’s owners? When the inspector asked the man to take his dog inside, the man told the inspector just to kick him out of the way.
That is not a human who deserves to be the caretaker of a dog.
And that breaks my heart as well.
Oh Meg, I am so sorry for your loss. What a heartbreak. 😦
This post makes me sad all around. Your kitty deserves better….but then again so does the poor dog.
I’m so sorry, this is horrible!! Hopefully it was quick for poor Ki. 😦