a neighborhood Labor Day Weekend tragedy

Sunday morning the disarray on the front porch said everything, as Toby beckoned our inquiry into a massacre she had survived. During the night, violent death came to our yards, and what had to have been a small pack of dogs wiped out half of the cats on the block.

It had been a full moon, as the Mother of Mayhem wrought injustice and outrage. And our favorite cat Velvet was MIA. Much to our relief, she showed up quite traumatized, by the afternoon.

That makes four cats killed in less than a week, just among us and our closest neighbors. Slightly bloody, Baby, Fiona and Bad Kitty appear to have been killed instantly by nothing short of a killing machine.

Baby was quite old, and weak, partially blind, and had been part of our household for almost eighteen years.

  

This brought back the horror my wife experienced a couple of years ago when an unleashed dog ran up onto our front porch and killed one of our cats right in front of her. But in this case, somebody's beloved canine pets, yet murderous thrill-killers on the loose, probably had been let out to make the rounds and go to the bathroom... in between wreaking death and destruction while we slept.

Fiona had been adopted from a shelter by our daughter, and was a magnificant Rag Doll who loved living in a place with a yard and tall lush grass.

  

 It turns out the killing had started last week, but we had not been warned. Already one neighbor several houses down had watched early one morning as two dogs tore her cat to shreads. But I'm not sure what one can do to protect their cats from such things, without denying them the casual freedom they love. A witness to last Monday's savage mauling says one of the suspects is a black pit bull type... no surprise there. Ironic isn't it, that my last blog was about a symbolic death... on the eve of such finality for half of our sweet kitties.

And across the street... Bad Kitty belonged to our neighbors, a sassy tom that came daily to inspect our food bowls.

 

They will be missed. 

 

Update: My neighbor spotted two more dead cats near Trinity Lutheran Church on Labor Day... which the buzzards had already found, probably casualties of the same dogs. There needs to be stiff fines for people who let dangerous dogs run amuck in densely populated areas.