Category: Cats

Sad cat

In the evening, while C was trimming the long branches of our Naniwa rose, an unknown cat was walking past the parking. No collar; beautiful long black and gray hair, and bushy whiskers. But there was something odd about its walk. It couldn’t walk straight. C went to see it closer, and it wanted to run away because of a human’s presence or smell. It seemed it couldn’t see: it had pretty round, bead-like, wide open pupils even though it was day time, and walked in a circle. It probably wanted to run but couldn’t. But it finally left, tottering badly. C said it was a castrated male and looked sick.

The morning of the next day, the cat was scrunched down at the parking. C went to see him again, and again he wanted to run away from a person’s presence. But he couldn’t move. It was a sunny day, even after the seeing-in of the rainy season, so it would be hot for him if we left him there, and cars were dangerous for him more than that. This time he was lying down at the same place. He didn’t move… ‘What should we do, what should we do?’ While we thought so, it was getting closer to the time I had to leave home. Probably, it was a better idea to move him to a shady place, then I asked the person next door to help us. With us surrounding and looking at him, he was afraid of people again and wanted to run away. He tried to move his legs very hard, miaowed painfully, and stretched his body. It was the end. People from nearby also came closer to us. We thought to at least move him to the shady side and carried the motionless body a few meters, then put him in a box our neighbour brought.

We still don’t know where he came or what had happened to him. He was castrated, which means he was kept somewhere as a pet. His hair was also beautiful. We guess he probably hadn’t been sick for a long time. Perhaps he drank something bad and got kidney trouble, which finally affected his brain. Or – we don’t want to think about it, but – perhaps someone who doesn’t like cats fed him poisoned food. These were our guesses.

If we had done something for him, we could have helped him… starting to think so, it pains my heart. We really hope people who have pets have responsibility for them from the first to the end.

–YS, 15 June 2005

15 June 2005