The dogs killed a cat last night. While I was chatting with Allison, and Lilly and Daniel were playing before they left, Pollux rushed off the settee in the living room and shot into the garden. I thought no more of it, since they do this frequently, and I wasn’t unduly worried now that Leo has reinforced the fence at the back of the garden.
However, there was a lot of barking and, when Allison said, “is that your dogs barking?” I listened, and it was indeed Castor’s characteristic high yelping bark.
There was suddenly an air of extreme urgency and we all shot into the dining room. I saw that, behind the trampoline, the dogs were tugging at something between them and I heard my voice say, “Fuck” as I rushed outside. They had a little black cat.
I waded in, shouting at the dogs and grabbed the cat, which seemed softly to try to bite down on my left arm. I called to Allison to get the dogs inside and shut the doors, which she did, and I lay the poor cat down on the grass and felt her warm body for a heartbeat. It looked, however, as though the muscle contractions of death had set in and I held her, just saying, “you’re okay, I’m sorry sweetheart, I’m so sorry.” She passed on; the flies were landing on her and her eyes were open but glazed. Allison had by now come into the garden and I asked her to call the RSPCA. Daniel saw me holding the cat and panicked, “Mummy, you love the cat more than you love me!” He shouted. By now both kids were realising that this was something serious. “I love you more than anything, Daniel,” I said, “But this cat is dying and I just want her to pass as peacefully as possible, knowing that someone is looking after her at this time.”
Allison was given the number of a 24-hour vet near to our postcode, and they texted me the address details. We couldn’t find any identification on the cat’s collar, so it was decided that perhaps the vet could scan her for a micro-chip, and let her humans know the sad news. I placed her gently into a plastic box, with Daniel panicking about where I was going and how long it would take, and wondering if he could come with me. I said that, if it was okay with Allison, could he stay at home while I did this, and he then decided to stay with Allison and Lilly while I took the cat away. Allison had shut the dogs in the garage, and off I went, to Worcester Park, with a dead cat in a box in the footwell of the front passenger seat of the car.
When I found the premises, I took out the box and saw that the cat had bled en route. I rang the buzzer and two ladies came to meet me. They had been pre-informed by the person to whom Allison and I had spoken while I was with the cat in the garden. It was then that I cried; I put the box on the counter and I said to this poor little body, “I’m so sorry sweetheart.” The ladies were very sweet and, having inspected the cat, told me that she wasn’t badly punctured and that Pointers are quick to dispatch their prey. By the time I got to her, they said, she would either have been dead or have suffered a heart attack from the shock. She wouldn’t have known a thing, they said. I hope they are right; it is of some consolation to me that, with the fast jerking motions of my head when I sustained the brain injury, I didn’t know a thing and, though not dead, have no recollection of that period in which I was completely prey to the elements. I can only hope that, as she lay dying last night, the little cat didn’t know a thing, and felt no pain.
They would scan for a micro-chip and spare her people the details, we agreed; and say simply that she had been found and brought to them. As she wasn’t so badly punctured it wouldn’t be so cruel on their eyes if they chose to see her or bring her home to bury her. I had mused, on the way to the veterinary practice, on karma. Was this her karma, to die like this? I wondered; I know so little about that sort of thing, but I couldn’t help but feel that “it’s their karma” is a too-easy, too inconsiderate box-ticking exercise as we try to make sense of the reality of things and that is that, sometimes, shit just happens.
It’s Nature. It is the nature of existence that we are hard-wired to continue so to do but, when it comes down to it, we are all hard-wired to hunt, to exclude, to kill – and it is only by virtue of education that we choose not to kill or to engage in random acts of cruelty, those of us who are predisposed that way. Dogs, and Castor in particular, have an instinct to hunt and kill. Castor would without a doubt have attacked the cat; Pollux, slightly more human-friendly, would have heard what was happening and reverted to wolf type only then. Castor is simply one step closer to Wolf. We have known this for some time, and it’s a hard fact to confront. Our human expectations may be somewhat askew: we like to have dogs as pets; we like their faithful unconditional love for us; we mollycoddle and anthropomorphise; but they are dogs. Train them as we might, some dogs are just hunters, and Cass is that sort of a dog.
On the way home I played Faith No More loudly; it seemed that sort of a night. The dogs were pleased to see me and I told them, gently, to piss off. I wanted to make sure that Daniel was okay, and Lilly and Allison, who had so kindly stayed to look after Daniel while I did what had to be done. Allison said, “That was a hard thing that you did; I couldn’t have done what you’ve done.” The thing is, it just had to be done. After they had left, Daniel wanted to talk about what had happened; he marched back and forth in his characteristic way, making sense of it out loud. I let him and, to be honest, when he said that, the last time the dogs had stayed, and a cat had narrowly escaped over the garden fence, it was the same cat, I agreed. He’s right. Bottom line – the cat wasn’t fast enough.
Be quick or be dead.
Daniel went to sleep easily and I am relieved about that. I lay awake for much of the night, Pollux on my bed and Castor in the doorway of my bedroom. Foxes squealed outside as they played, and the dogs sat up, rumbling. The incident with the dogs and the cat replayed repeatedly in my mind. After a while, I went downstairs to vape and I tapped, “Even though I feel overwhelmed, I deeply and profoundly love myself”. It enabled me to relax enough to sleep eventually.
Today I feel mentally and emotionally tired. I dropped Daniel at his dad’s and I drove home, half-hating the dogs. Of course I love them; but I don’t like what they do; what is in their nature to do. We own dogs at a price: how long can we pretend that they aren’t, ultimately, what they are: loving creatures but ferocious killers? After all, we also have dogs for protection, and sometimes perhaps this is as far as we get in accepting their nature. But it’s more brutal than that and, for me, it’s a reminder of the fact that, in a household of humans and dogs, humans are the boss. We have to be, for their nature is not as kind and loving as we might like to think it is.
I stared at Castor earlier, he always either sits or stands, and looks at me. I was seated, and he came towards me, putting his head on my knees. I scratched his neck and, as I did so, I considered breaking it, or somehow showing that I am the dominant member of the household. But I cannot; that is cruelty, and it boils down to being firm but fair, as the saying goes.
It certainly provides an odd counterpoint: a text message came through from Mum earlier, saying “Hi. Prague is amazing. Hope all is well xxx” She doesn’t need to know about last night. It certainly puts things into perspective: my child is safe and happy and with his dad, I have dogs to walk and laundry to do; I have groceries to buy.
It is times like these that help to put life into better perspective; it reminds me to be grateful for the things that are good, and right, and healthy and on an even keel – even if I do count my sense of being on-the-edge all the time due to stress as part of that ‘even keel’. I haven’t tipped over the edge yet.
Fascinating Purgatory - A Guided Tour 