I'm Suffering

I just wanted to write something, to take away some pain. I can hardly see the screen as I type this. I'm a guy, well educated - but this has thrown me - and my wife - for a complete loop.

It happened on January 1, 2005. The New Year - well it couldn't have started off any worse. Our 8-month old kitten, Kit, who was the bright spot for 2004 and the joy of my life was taken by coyotes on Saturday. We have one other cat but Kit was - well special like no cat I have ever owned.

We stayed up until 1am on Saturday, walking the streets and calling her every 5 minutes but she didn't come home. A neighbor told us she had seen Kit in her backyard at lunchtime, heading for the open ground where the coyotes hunt. Its quite a ways from our house. She was always a wanderer and I had hoped that she would get her street smarts soon enough. I called my friend who lives by that boundary and he told me that the coyotes had become very aggressive - three families on his little street of perhaps eight homes, lost a cat each on one day.

I was up at daybreak on Sunday and walked for miles and miles, calling and searching.

Our prior cats lived to be 16 1/2 years and were allowed to come and go as they liked. Seems that very spirit that endeared Kit to me was her own undoing. She was the daring-do high-wire get-into-trouble type, climbing trees since she was tiny and sometimes getting stuck. She actually liked dogs and sought them out to play with. Quite the topic of conversation with the people next doot who watched Rusty, their lab, and Kit chase eachother around their garden.

Kit would sit on my lap in the office, often trying to catch the mouse pointer on the screen. In the mornings she would bury herself in my robe, curling up under my armpit, occasionally nipping my nose, once with kitten-sharp teeth, more recently the gentlest of feline affection. Her way of telling me that it was food time was to bite my socks as I walked towards the kitchen. The toughest thing was to only put down only one bowl on Sunday morning.

So I'm devastated. I see the movement in the shadows everywhere. I also feel guilt that I didn't do enough to protect her. That's a strange part of having a family I suppose. Could I have kept her in more? It was the family duty, and a difficult one, to make sure both cats were in before it got dark each day. I assumed that coyotes would hunt at dawn & dusk and that smart cats like Kit would have the edge in daylight. I was dreadfully wrong.

Right now I wish I could do the Rip Van Winkle thing and skip 2005. Sunday was always going to be a tough day, it is my mother's birthday, lost to me many years ago. Next January 2 I'm staying in bed all day.

Its so difficult. Last night I went to bed at 11 and my wife was in the office doing some emails. I heard her sobbing and I got up. Her whole body was heaving with grief and she looked even smaller than normal. All I could do was hold her while she convulsed and wept. God this is the hardest thing. I sat up with her until 12:30 then got her into bed.

Thanks for letting me post.