Tuesday, July 31, 2007

   My arms are outstretched towards you...
Post time: 3:36p.m. CT
Music: “All Around Me” by Flyleaf

This morning, I got up and ate breakfast like usual...around 8:30-9:00, my brother yells for me to come downstairs. “You need to come and see this!” He said. I couldn’t make out any type of emotion in his voice, and it worried me. I ran downstairs and put my flip-flops on. He was standing at the back door, pointing to the parked explorer. Our orange kitten, Sunny was just laying there. I gave Drew an odd look before going outside and walking over. I knew something was wrong already; Sunny usually comes running at me and sits at my feet waiting for me to pick him up. When I crouched down, I saw that he wasn’t breathing, and he had dried foam around and in his mouth. I couldn’t see very much of him because he was lying by the tire. I started crying and screaming for him to wake up...but he wouldn’t...My brother and I used a shovel to scoop his body up and put it in a plastic bag before putting it in a shoebox for the burial when my dad gets home.

It hurts so much when a pet dies, especially one you were close to, and one you helped raise from a baby. That’s how it is with our cats...Each time Cali has a litter, I always end up bonding with at least one more-so than the others. This time was no different. Sunny was just the most mellow little cat I’ve ever seen. He didn’t pick any fights with his brothers and sister, he didn’t bite and scratch (playfully, mind you) like the others, you could hold him and just look at you with this adorable look he constantly had on his face. He always came over to me when I went outside, he followed me when I walked around the yard or up the driveway, he loved to fall asleep in my lap when I sat in the lawn chairs. He was a very photogenic little kitty, too. No matter what sort of pose he was in, or what he was doing, he looked perfect in pictures.

I’m no stranger to close pets dying...or being killed for that matter. About three or four years ago, around when we first moved into this house, there was another Mama cat who eventually took up residence in our back yard because we gave her scraps. The second litter she had (the first litter were wild, except for an orange one who eventually began to trust us) was the litter Braveheart was in. He was the biggest out of his siblings as well as the bravest, and he had a slight white patch on his chest, which is how he got his name. He grew up into a very handsome young cat, kind of longer fur than the others. I always used to let him in the house (even when I wasn’t supposed to), and cuddle with him on my bed, or play with him in my room. One day is was storming and there was supposed to be a tornado near us or something, so Drew and I let Braveheart in “so he wouldn’t get blown away”, or so we told our parents. He sat in my lap in the chair, and watched the golf game that was on TV. Yes, I kid you not, the cat watched golf. On our way back from either Omaha or Sioux City, we were going down our dirt road, and I heard my mom gasp and my dad made sad moan-like noise and stopped the car. My dad opened his door and looked at the ground before closing it again and looking at my mom, who then looked at me. I stared at them and asked what was wrong, but they didn’t say anything. They didn’t have to, I already figured out that he had gotten run over. I went into a hysteric crying and screaming fit and wouldn’t get out of the car until my mom came out and opened my door about 15 minutes later. Even when I got out, I ran to my room and cried some more for another half and hour. After that, I went outside and picked up Braveheart’s brother, Buddy, and walked around the yard crying some more, only not quite so hard. I still want to know who the hell ran him over so I can tell them off. It pissed me off so much that somebody was stupid enough to not pay attention on a freaking dirt road in the middle of the country! WTF?! What if it would have been a deer or a loose cow? I’m pretty sure that person would have been injured pretty bad, if not dead (or sued if it was a cow). And not to long ago, one of our older cats who adopted the family near our road got hit by a car as well. It didn’t hurt as much as the other two, and I didn’t cry, but there’s still that terrible loss. I don’t know what I’d do if Tiger were to somehow get killed...

I hate people who think that pet’s are just possessions or items you own. “You can’t compare them to a human dying.” Bull shit. They’ve obviously never owned a pet who loved them, or have never loved anything other than a person. A pet becomes part of the family, and when it dies, we feel the same sense of loss as with a human; true, it might not be quite so terrible a when a grandparent or other family member dies, but it’s awfully close... I had the urge to draw a picture of my two angels, and I uploaded it, so you can check it out here. There are some more sentimental words in the description, but you don’t have to read them if you don’t want to. Just some thoughts on losing pets. And here are pictures of Sunny I took yesterday, except for the first one since it’s when they weren’t adventurous enough to go outside the cat-house.





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