It is not a good start to a day when you go outside to set out the recyclables and discover that your husband has run over a kitten with the car...
and it isn't dead.
Cats in our neighborhood run wild (mostly due to my next door neighbor). They breed every year, a fresh batch of cute fur balls play in our yard every spring only to grow into mean, ugly, scavengers missing tails and eyes and are general pests that use our yard as a litter box.
But this is just a kitten, a little black and white only a few months old. I cringe and realize that its injuries are severe (parts coming out) and so it will be dead soon, then I will get the shovel and take it into the forest behind our house...
breaks my heart.
So later in the day I have to get the big blue bin out of the driveway so that Bryan can park the car, and I get a shovel to move the fuzzy corpse and there lies the poor thing...
and it still isn't dead.
The humane person in me feels horrible that it must have suffered all day long and now I am faced with what must be done...
but I can't bring myself to do it. The right thing would be to put the little suffering thing out of its misery but I am both grossed out by the grisly sight and yet can't eve fathom whacking it with the shovel.
This is horrible.
So I take my shovel and scoop up the animal trying not to hurt it further (who am I kidding). I carry it down the hill to the forest behind our property and try not to look at it. But the few glimpses that I get reveals that it seems to have a broken back. At this point I am feeling huge amounts of guilt for not killing it in the driveway. Giving the shovel a swing I heave the poor thing into the forest praying that it died on my shovel, or at least on impact from the toss. I feel awful.
Would I feel as bad for a lesser creature?
What if it had been a rat instead of a kitten? Would I have had the same hesitation? The same compassion?
Sorry you had to go through that. Reminded me of the kitten Mom and I accidentally killed when it crawled up under the car hood to keep warm and got killed when we started the engine. Not a very pretty sound. Hope the visual goes away soon. Love Sis
One more comment. Now I will forever have the term "Tossing Kitty" and a picture of my baby sister etched in my brain. I know it is sad but it made me laugh. I guess I spent too much time on the farm.
I'm sorry you had to endure that. The weight of all of this pain rests with these thoughtless neighbors.
Send me the particulars - I'll call the authorities from here and report them. We endured five years of an alcoholic neighbor with a barking dog he left out until all hours of night. It's just not reasonable for anyone to live carelessly on the patience and deference of others.