Well JA has tweeted about it, and L mentioned it on evilFB..

[lovingboth]

.. so I may as well complete the set.

'Our' cat was killed at about 9:30 last night. He was hit by the car of someone visiting one of the neighbours. It was an instant kill, and the driver was more upset than I was.

We'd had him almost exactly two years - see the 'I want a dog' posts from May 2012, about a week after he arrived. He'd been someone's pet, abandoned for some time, found and L offered to rehouse him.

I described him then as 'a noisy little beast who likes human company a lot and is prepared meow to get it', and that stayed the case. His fur recovered.. even if much of it ended up on the carpets, and he also got to a normal weight, so he had a much nicer last couple of years than at least some of his first four-ish (the vet's estimate of his age when we adopted him).

One of the reasons I wasn't particularly upset was that it wasn't an enormous surprise: he was not very road-smart, and had a habit of making last second dashes. From what was said about what happened, he made one too many.

But he thoroughly enjoyed being outside, doing cat stuff with the other cats around here. For the past few weeks, he'd been doing things like meowing at the back door, being let in (no cat flap), then running to the front door and meowing to be let out again, sigh! (It's easy for a cat to get from one side of this house to another without doing that.) He'd also do things like meow to be let in, demand his feed, eat it, then demand to be let out again - this was a pitstop.

JA is more upset and didn't want to help bury him, but the last time a cat died on us, about five years ago, her reaction was 'what pet are we getting next?'

I'm left with the memories of this one and the thought that he's the first air-breathing pet I've been involved with who's died notably early. That's about six cats, two gerbils, one dog and a tortoise living to old age. Which is a better average than most.

Comments

[sfred]

Sorry to hear that.

[nitoda]

Sorry to hear about cat and difficulties contacting L about what to do.

[ludy]

i'm very sorry

[barakta]

Ugh, I'm sorry to hear about this. I can understand why you found him hard work. I hope JA is OK and that you are OK in supporting her as needed.

[badriya.livejournal.com]

That's the trouble with sharing your home with animals. They die and how sad you are varies but there is some hurt. I had cats who got ill and I had to sign a death warrant at the vet. And then daughter had to for one and that one was worst. But now we have dogs too and those will be much worse, I suspect.