I hope no one will take this as a death threat on the livelihood of their sweet little indoor animals. Every time I go to flute lessons I like to sit in my teacher's living room and love on her dachshund and Persian cat. In fact, she owns seven or eight cats. She's a cat person. Everywhere I go, the dogs come up and love on me. As long as they don't stink to bad, I'll love on them.
Right now, my legs are quavering and shaking. They've been quavering and shaking for about ten minutes now. I just shot the stray cat, and buried my dead chicken. I had been quietly coloring a pretty picture with my friend Sarah Rogers/Cottle and my sisters when we heard flapping and squawking in the front yard. In about 1.8 seconds I had my gun in my hand and was tearing across the front yard, loading it and pumping it up to the eighth pump (it's not supposed to go over six- but just goes to show what adrenaline can do in this farm girl), ...tearing across the front yard like a wild banshee...or a US Marine and screaming "CAT! MY CHICKEN OR YOUR LIFE!" I leaped over the neighbor's fence in one swift leap, trailing the cat with my bird dangling from its mouth by ten or twenty feet only to come face to face with the neighbor man. A really nice redneck man with a big heart who likes tinkering with his Chevy Camero. I knew for sure he wouldn't think very well of a lady in a skirt plowing like an ex-Marine across his property with a BB Gun after a cat that might be his. "Sir, was that your cat? Did you see a gray and white cat c-c-come b-by here?!" I was shaking with rage and looking around wildly...perhaps even psychopathically.
"Yeah- he had a chicken in his mouth! Go shoot it!" That was all I needed! I tore behind the trailer, my stomach churning so bad I wanted to stop and throw up. I knew the cat wouldn't leap the wire fence with the bird, he's have to have gone through the one hole homeless people had cut to get to the trailer before it had been reoccupied and legally. I went to the corner anyway and squatted. I saw the cat half concealed by leaves with my bird in its mouth. Bringing the gun up I took immediate aim for the guts and fired. The cat leaped and disappeared. I knew that if I'd missed, he'd have taken my bird. If I'd hit him, the bird would be there. I ran along the fence till I came to the opening and tore down the steep slopes to the creek, tripping and reeling along the way. My vision blurred here and there as my heart screamed out for my little girl. Thorny vines with spikes 1/2 and inch long tore at me and I broke branches with one arm and then my gun barrel. I had to heave a thick bough of a fallen tree out of my way to get to the creek and then I nearly cried when I thought I'd lost the cat. I didn't hear it running away...I hoped I'd killed it right where it stood. Deciding to confirm this, I went West, back up the hill, through terrain I'd never dreamed of facing while exploring. Right where I'd shot the cat...my bird lay. Her neck was broken...she was bloody...lifeless...and it was the one with the hurt leg...who I'd babied for four days now. Now I have only four chickens...
When I came back to the neighbor man, holding my lifeless baby in one hand and my weapon in the other, the neighbor man offered his kind hearted advice on the benefit of roosters in a flock and where to get some Jersey Giants if we ever wanted any. I thanked him and asked him if he owned any cats. He said that they were all strays that got into the garbage. No body owned him. "Thank you, sir. I said. Thank you very much." And I hopped back over the fence and attempted to feel if my baby had any heart beat...even breath. After several minutes I felt her feet and eyelids grow cold. I took a shovel...and I buried her...alongside the ten other chickens I've lost within two years.
This autobiographical story is one every livestock owner has lived. Next Monday I will go to my music lesson, and love on Smoky, the Persian...I might even pet the little kitty that strolls up to me out in public. The neighborhood garbage cats...
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