I wake up in the middle of the night trying to find a place to put all these thoughts. Gracie, my sweet cat of 15 years, died a violent death last Friday. A fair amount of death in the country is violent - my dogs eats a chicken, we kill a snake, set out tons of mousetraps, and so on.
While she was old, I didn't feel like it was her time yet. If she had been a second faster, she'd have made it up the tree, away from the vicious dog going after her. But she didn't. If it hadn't been that dog, it might have been a coyote another night. You have to be fastest, in the country, to survive.
It was pretty tough at the after-hours vet's office, giving the go-ahead to put down my kitty. Of course it was. Do I want my dear friend, the owner of the perpetrator dog, to feel that same pain and put her dog down? Do two wrongs make a right? Do I think an eye for an eye, or a pet for a pet, will bring Gracie back?
No. But it still wakes me up at night.
While she was old, I didn't feel like it was her time yet. If she had been a second faster, she'd have made it up the tree, away from the vicious dog going after her. But she didn't. If it hadn't been that dog, it might have been a coyote another night. You have to be fastest, in the country, to survive.
It was pretty tough at the after-hours vet's office, giving the go-ahead to put down my kitty. Of course it was. Do I want my dear friend, the owner of the perpetrator dog, to feel that same pain and put her dog down? Do two wrongs make a right? Do I think an eye for an eye, or a pet for a pet, will bring Gracie back?
No. But it still wakes me up at night.