So Much Pain. So Much Guilt. So Much Anger At Myself., I just can't believe my Iggy was hit by a car so close to home. Options

[MissingMyLittleI...]

Hi everyone. I think this site might just save my life, or at least my sanity. Thank you so much for all being here and being such a wonderful support group. I have spent hours reading all your stories... and crying and crying and crying, for all of you, for me, for my little cat Iggy who was struck dead by a car Monday night just two houses up the street from our house. I am crying so much, the screen keeps blurring and I have to keep stopping... oh, this pain is unbelievable.

I know (from reading your posts) that this intense grieving I am going through is normal and that I will be able to bear the pain a little more every day. I can't imagine it ever being gone, though, and I will tell you why: I made a STUPID decision to let my two cats, Iggy and Pete, be indoor-outdoor guys. I guess it's partially because my last cat, Gizmo, who died in August 2006 was so good at being outdoors ad never getting himself in trouble. I have always been the person who thought the rescue/adoption agencies and shelters were seriously meddling with pet ownership when they said "Indoors Only or No Adoption". I chose to get Pete and Iggy from two different rescues that gave me the freedom to decide to let them "have fun" outside. I always thought (I am a biologist) that cats needed to have that freedom to be happy. The problem is-- I now understand, oh too well-- that every time they went out through their cat door, I was playing kitty roulette and they might not come back alive. Oh, this is killing me... (I just can't stop the tears: I am dehydrated so much from crying that my lips are chapped.)

Well, now I know. Poor Pete thinks he is being tortured, I'm sure, but we blocked access to the cat door and he has been inside since Tuesday, when we found out Iggy had been killed.

I need to get this story out of me again and again, it seems. I have called almost all my friends already and told them all, but I feel compelled to share it here too. This is long, long, long... but I hope you will read it.

On Monday night, I heard a bird really screeching and went around the side of the house to see what was going on, and--lo and behold!-- here comes Iggy, carefully climbing up the porch steps with a Mockingbird (!!!) in his mouth. Well, I have both my cats wear bells on their collars to prevent them from being able to catch birds, but he had caught his first one anyway, and at night no less. I held him under my left arm and used my right hand to push on the sides of his jaw so he would release the bird. This worked, and the bird flew away (hopefully without a fatal injury), and then I gave Iggy a big hug and told him he was a good boy and gave him his favorite treats (Greenies).

He happily ate them and then went back out his cat door, even though the front door was wide open (classic Iggy). That was the last time we saw him alive. [I feel like dying every time I think of this: all we had to do was hang on to him in the house, call it a night, and he would still be here with me. But I was busy working on grading homework and exams and had no idea this was a CRITICAL MOMENT for us both. I kept working for a while and then decided I wanted to go for a walk to get some chocolate at a store a few blocks up the street. My boyfriend Sean and I walked up the street-- on the sidewalk, which I never choose! I always walk in the street and would have seen him if he had already been hit (though we didn't hear an impact... and now that I am making an attempt to think more clearly about all this, I think we would have). Then, on the way back, we walked down the middle of the street but got forced on to the sidewalk as a car passed (Was that *the* car? Again, I don't think so any more since we didn't hear an impact. Also, I don't think that car was going fast enough to do what was done to my poor little man...)

Then, we came inside, sat on the couch, turned on a stupid movie (13 going on 30, or the other way around... I never want to see it again, ever), ate some chocolate and decided to turn in around 1am. At that point, we called for Iggy and Sean shook the catfood bag and the treat bag (this usually worked, but not always... so we were not worried when he didn't come in), and then we GAVE UP and went to bed. This is the part that really kills me. He might have already been hit, but I don't think so (same rationale as before). I think if I had just walked up the street a few houses and called him, he would have come to bed with me and, again, he would still be alive and here with me now. I don't know why I didn't go look for him. I feel like I always went and looked for him, but I had actually slacked off lately. I guess my mindset was that he had been doing this outside thing just fine for a long time... no, I take this back. I didn't even have a mindset. I guess I thought he was probably miffed that I had taken his bird away from him. It was more like "oh well, he'll come in when he feels like it."

Or he'll get hit by a car and I will never see him alive again. Oh god. I never even considered the danger he was in EVERY time he went outside. Another CRITICAL MOMENT had come and gone, and I had missed it.

I had also drunk some linden tea because I've been having trouble sleeping lately, and the awful thing is that while I generally take a long time to fall asleep and then sleep lightly (so I would have heard an impact... maybe... it was just a couple houses up where it happened), I fell asleep fast that night and woke up telling my boyfriend that I had had the best sleep I had had in forever...while my little cat was hit by a car. How horrible and ironic.

In the morning, I yelled for Iggy, expecting him to be in the tree he'd been sleeping in lately (another classic Iggy maneuver) and shook his treats and his food, but he was already gone by the time I yelled for him. Not just dead. Gone.

I went to teach my biology class and when I got out of class, I got a text message from Sean that said "call me right away." I knew right then that something was horribly wrong, but I pushed the idea that it could be Iggy down in my mind. But it was Iggy. Sean told me as soon as I walked in the door: Iggy was hit by a car and he didn't make it and then something like "I'm sorry" or maybe "I'm serious". All I could say was "Oh, no." And then "Where is he?"

It turns out our neighbor had found Iggy dead on the sidewalk in front of his neighbor's door, so he called his maintenance man to come and dispose of the body. This still makes no sense to me, because when Sean came home for lunch, he came right over-- smiling and jovial: what the hell?-- and asked if we had a little gray cat with a blue collar. Sean said yes and then the maintenance guy who was sitting in his truck right there in front of our house told him that Iggy had been hit by a car and he had taken him to the shelter. But he HAD NOT. He had taken him to a composting dumpster. Oh my god. The thought that my poor Iggy was not only dead, but in a dumpster with god-knows-what was absolutely devastating. It took us some sleuthing to figure this all out-- valuable time wasted-- so that, by the time we all (four of us) met at the dumpster, it had been compacted and we could not get Iggy out.

I let the maintenance man have it. (This is the one thing I did in that 24 hour period that I am proud of.) I told him he had no respect for LIFE, animal or human. I told him he KNEW that cat was someone's pet-- in fact, the neighbor suspected it was OUR pet-- and yet, he dumped it in a dumpster that he knew it would be impossible to get it back out of. I went on and on... I don't remember it all. And I did it without tears.

Then, I walked over to the dumpster and stared into it, realizing I was not going to get my Iggy out of that reeking, nightmarish mess. I made a sound that I have never made before, then, and it just kept coming out of me. It was like an animal moan, straight up from my lungs. I had to squat down on the ground to keep from collapsing. I cried so hard, I couldn't see anything. The neighbor realized they had done the wrong thing and offered to pay (oh, that's a classic: "I don't want to get my hands dirty, but if you can find someone to do the dirty work, I will foot the bill." What a gesture. Ugh.) The maintenance man, however, just kept this asinine smirk-ish look on his face through the whole ordeal.

Sean brought me home and I called Waste Mgmt, who told me there was no way I could get into that dumpster. Sean called the ASPCA to see if there were laws prohibiting dumping animals like Iggy had been dumped. [No. Just one Florida law that says if you do put an animal in a dumpster (my god!), it has to be packaged in a certain way.] We sat on the couch, heartbroken. I talked to lots of friends I hadn't talked to in a long time that night. They told me it was probably better for me to NOT see Iggy in such awful condition, but I knew I needed to get him out of that dumpster.

No sleep Tuesday night, and then our other cat Pete was up crying at the window and then at us at 5am. I found myself thinking I absolutely HAD TO go to the dumpster, right then. Sean begged me not to do this to myself. I cried myself back into quasi-sleep, but then had to go teach again. That's when I snapped out of my stupor: I stopped at the landfill on my way home from class and asked them if I could be called when the dumpster was brought in and emptied. The woman I talked to said they probably couldn't do that, but I should call the # I had already called the day before (and gotten no for an answer). As an afterthought, she said I should ask for the supervisor of the landfill: that was the first part of the key to resolving this, maybe.

I called and left a message for him, by way of a customer service person who spent maybe 15 minutes on the phone with me, getting down all the details I wanted to tell him. She said they couldn't put me through to him, but she would email him and he might give me a call back. Might.

While I was talking to her, I drove to the dumpster. It wasn't rational, but I had to do it. When I got there, the maintenance man was there. I had thought I might try strangling him if I ever saw him again, but this strange calm came over me and I walked right up to him and said I had a few questions I needed to ask him. His demeanor was different this time around. He answered my questions (where *exactly* did they find him? what *exactly* did the bag look like that he was in... in case Waste Mgmt let me look for him the next day when the dumpster would be emptied? and finally, when he picked him up, was he SURE he was really gone?) and then, incredibly, apologized and said he had felt awful since the day before.

I drove home and went to the spot where they found my Iggy. Nothing. Then, as I was getting really upset, thinking he must not have had major injuries... and maybe he had suffered all night while I slept... and maybe I could have saved him... I looked another couple of feet to my right and saw a pool of dried blood. That might sound awful, and it was, but it also told me he probably died instantly and did not suffer. I fairly ran back to my house and crumpled up on the couch and made that awful noise again.

Then the phone rang-- the guy from Waste Mgmt!!-- and he said they would probably pick up the dumpster around 7 the next morning (today; Thursday). As soon as he gave me this information, I knew he was saying YES. I could go and find my baby! I broke down completely and thanked him over and over. He said he would call in the morning and I could meet him at the landfill, which he did at 6:45 this morning.

Sean and I were as prepared as we could be to go and dig through an awful pile of trash to find Iggy (the bag was black with yellow ties-- thank god for the yellow ties!). But, after we walked up to meet the Waste Mgmt guy and shook his hand, he reached down and picked up a white box and simply said "Here he is." They had already gone through the dumpster and found him for us! I couldn't believe how kind these men were for doing this very nasty work for some woman they had never met, and for a cat that was already dead. So unbelievably kind. My heart aches (in a good way) when I think about their kindness and sympathy and how proud the older guy who had actually found Iggy looked. They had even put him in a clear plastic bag so I could see through the bag that it was him. And they had made sure to include his little blue collar. My god.

On the way home, I decided I had to bathe my little man, to honor him, and to really examine his injuries (I was a vet tech long ago) to determine whether he had died quickly or slowly. Sean begged me not to do this to myself, but again, I knew I needed to. It was horrible for Sean, but it was such sweet sorrow for me: I could touch my Iggy one last time, I could do the right thing with his body, I could find out--for sure-- that his injuries were so massive that death must have been instantaneous (thank god). Sean and I then placed a whole bunch of pictures (of me and Iggy, though there are none of me with Iggy-- none! I am heartbroken at this and reassessing how I live my life, and what I put time and effort and thought into, instead of taking stuff like this for granted...), toys, treats, a leaf from the avocado tree he'd been sleeping in lately, and a single feather from his mockingbird (found it right next to the front door at the last second before I took him to the vet!). I am so glad I did what I felt was right this morning, but I was a wreck afterward anyway.

I decided he should be cremated, not buried in a town that hasn't felt like home since I got here a year ago and that I can never forgive for taking my little cat's life (I know that must be irrational,but it's how I feel), so I called a friend to come with me to the vet's office to drop him off. I will have his ashes on December 17th, but I know I won't be healing any time soon. The grief and guilt and sadness comes over me in wave after wave, with no notice. I am still in total denial that my sweet little man is dead, and the idea that I could have saved him will haunt me for the rest of my life.

If you have read this whole saga (I guess this is a catharsis), thank you so much for doing me and my cat such an honor with your time. I look forward to your posts and I will cherish and respond to every one. Thank you again for being here to save me from drowning in pain and despair. --Sherri

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