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ornithopter: Please, Stop With The Killing Already... |
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I hate to be bumming you all out with dead animal stories lately, but they seem to be cropping up in spades these days. One of the downsides of spring, I guess.
Anyhoo, Monday night we came home late after a great show with Of Montreal to find one of the neighborhood cats dying in front of our house. It seemed to have been hit by a car since there was no blood but it couldn't walk. I realized that I had no idea what to do, not knowing where to find an all night vet. This was a luxury I took for granted living in Jamaica Plain. If there was an emergency, there was a great animal hospital a few blocks away. It soon became apparent that there was nothing we could do, anyway. While Erik went into the house to get a carrier, I held the cat and stroked its face as it began foaming at the mouth and convulsing and then finally died. We ended up putting it in the carrier anyway and then went into the house to try to find some sort of help because what do you do with a dead cat that's not yours? We called the police and they told us that if we put the cat on the sidewalk, the fire department could come and scoop it up. No way were we doing that. At this point we were still under the impression that this cat belonged to someone and if that ever happened to one of my cats I would freak out. Not that I would ever let my cats outdoors on their own because they inevitably end up dead before their time. We ended up just keeping it on the porch overnight and called our neighbor who also works at our vet's office. She was pretty sure that the cat was a stray so I brought it into them and they "disposed" of it. I didn't even want to know what that consisted of at that point, I just wanted the thing gone. It made me so sad. I had never seen anything die before. I still can't stop thinking about it, which is why I have to write about it. Also, for some reason, whenever I do think about it, I get that awful Cutting Crew song stuck in my head ("I just died in your arms tonight. It must have been something you saiiiiid.") Not only is it an awful song, but it feels a bit disrespectful.
Then the next day, Erik talked to our friend Ben and found out that his wife's turtle, Felix, had also died that night from some kind of infection in his shell.
From now on, all of my pets are going to be encased in several layers of bubble wrap and kept in sealed containers under Funk & Wagnall's porch.
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