Stray cat - R.I.P.

Two days ago I received some very bad news that left me feeling incredibly saddened. It regarded the little stray cat I posted about last year:

http://murderiseverywhere.blogspot.com/2011/02/stray-cat.html.

It does not take much genius to guess what the news regards - bad news involving a little cat, with a gnawed ear on one side of its head and scraggly fur can only be that the animal is no more. Which is the case.

The cat, called Villi by my family and Kubbur by our neighbours that also took care of him, had gone missing. No one had seen him for about a week, which in itself was not unheard of. Expecting him to appear out of the blue at any time, it was not until Saturday that I decided to check the webpage of a cat shelter in the case that he had been captured and sent there. There I found his photo:

I phoned immediately and got a machine, leaving a message and sending an e-mail for good measure. On Monday I got a call back telling me that the animal had been put down on the previous Thursday. Two days before I phoned. The cat was not in the category likely to get a home and had contacted some illness from the other cats in the shelter that made it too sick to attend to. The poor thing had never gotten any sort of shot and was therefore prone to harm from domesticated germs. For the week he was in the shelter the cat was agitated and frightened, ending its short life feeling miserable. I hate that piece of information and wished they had lied to me.

The ending of this story teetered for days on the edge seperating happy and sad and I blew it. I phoned too late. Had I checked 2-3 days earlier everything would have been okay. The cat would have enjoyed the warmth of summer, having managed to hang on through the cold and harsh winter.

My town, Seltjarnarnes apparently has hired someone to put out a trap to catch stray cats. As these are few and far between the catch is most often than not somebody's pet that has wandered into the cage out of curiosity. This time not. The photo caption on the shelter's webpage noted the street the cat was "found" on. But on the phone they told me the cat had been in this cage so now I know approximately where this contraption is situated.

The world is a strange place. Something that is so important to one person means nothing to the next. I must emphasise that I am not stupid, I know there is much more grief and sadness around than what I am feeling and that a single little cat is not of great consequence in the big scheme of things. This does not help me feel any better about this whole fiasco. Or stop me thinking about how differently I would feel had I only checked the shelter sooner.

But the fact that many, many someones somewhere have it worse does not help. On my street there are now two sad families. I cnnot imagine that the cat hunter is super happy or that anyone else had it better now that the animal has been put down. So the outcome of this equation is negative all-round.

We own an axe that I cannot for the life of me remember why we purchased. My husband went and got it from the storage and says he is going to find the cage and axe it to shit in the dead of night. Then he is going to throw it into the ocean. I am going to go with him. The only snag is that there is no dead of night here at the moment. We will have to wait for winter. And so we shall.

Yrsa - Wednesday