Over The Rainbow Again

 Cujo will have company today. Martha joined him yesterday. Not a peaceful death, though. He was mauled to death by two pitbulls whose owner thinks it is okay to let his dogs roam this mountainside.

Martha rarely left the parameters of our property. He did like to go down the ravine to the stream for a nice cool drink and this is our property. He must have been doing just that yesterday afternoon. We heard a commotion, dogs barking and a cat yowling. We immediately looked around to see if Martha was in the house, he wasn't.

Looking down near the stream I could see two white pits attacking a cat. I could not tell if it was Martha. It sounded like him and he was putting up a good fight, but there is a stray that looks like him. I started down the ravine and it was slow going. All the leaves made it all the more treacherous. I had my walking stick and I had to stop frequently and push leaves out of the way.

I was yelling at those dogs the entire time and I picked up rocks and sticks to throw at them. They dragged my cat across the stream and into the woods on the other side. I had dispatched HeWho to the neighbors to look for a better way down to the stream, but he found none. He did encounter the dogs' owner and instead of calling his dogs off, he tried to justify letting them roam loose. I was screaming as the dogs played tug of war with my Martha. He finally called them off an I stood watching the dark gray form lying still on the ground while HeWho was making his way down the ravine.

He waded across and told me it was definitely Martha and that he was alive. He picked him up and made his way back across the steam. Martha was mewling, no doubt, in pain. I took my t-shirt off to form a sort of hammock to put him in and carry him up the ravine. I didn't want to hold him, as I didn't know where he might be hurting.

If I thought the trip down the ravine was bad, the trip up was a nightmare. HeWho's legs gave out and he had to sit while I climbed up to the top. I had left the stove on and it was clear that neither one of us could walk up carrying Martha. I grabbed a tarp and some towels to cushion Martha and then climbed back down, about half way to get them.

My thought was to secure him on the tarp and pull him up. It worked for just a bit before he rolled out and down aways. When I got to him, he was dead. His eyes were set and he was no longer breathing.

He was no longer in pain, though. The adrenaline rush left me, but we still had a quarter of the way to go. I was crawling by then. I would put my cat in front of me and then crawl just beyond him, reach back and put him in front of me again. Made it almost to the top and the cat's body rolled back down, almost to the halfway point. HeWho was sitting on his butt and pushing his way up. I climbed back down and picked Martha up and we started over again.

It was getting dusky as we finally made it to the top. We wrapped our baby in towels and put his body in the shed. I could not bear the thought of those dogs finding him and playing with his dead body.

We took him to the crematory that took care of Cujo this morning. I didn't kiss him goodbye. His fur was matted with mud and he was in pretty bad shape. We looked for wounds when we first got to him, but other than puncture wounds from the dogs' teeth we really couldn't tell exactly where he was hurt the most.

Missing my big old boy today.