Aurantica
Beloved and Devoted Pet
- Joined
- Oct 22, 2010
- Posts
- 4,115
Thats horrible. I hope you report the dog's owners to the police for cruelty.Actually, it was yesterday, but I would have included too many obscenities, vulgarities and cuss words then, so I decided to wait.
As mentioned in another thread, she and I were yard sale-ing at the neighboring town 30 miles to the south (nearest community to ours). At one sale, three young boys (8-10-ish) were each holding a kitten about 5-6 weeks old. The kittens were the issue, we learned, of a stray who had come to the house and yard just before the kittens' birth and refused to leave.
Suddenly, a Boston terrier (leashless, of course, as so many dogs are in this area, regardless of the laws) leapt up and grabbed the tail of one of the kittens and yanked the baby from the boy's hand. The terrier promptly chomped down on the kitten's hindquarters and below-rib area, even as the kitten squalled, two women and the boy shrieked, and my darling girl raced over to help pull the dog away from the kitten.
It appeared that the kitten was lifeless, or nearly so. My girl gently picked him up and cuddled him, ascertained that he was breathing, though very rapidly and shallowly. She soothed him as best she could, one finger lightly rubbing the back of his head and neck, while the dog's owner literally kicked the dog into the garage, then went after him and beat him in some fashion. We couldn't see exactly what he was doing, but we could hear it, and his sister (the resident at the home where the sale was) telling him to stop, stop, he was going to kill the dog. He came stalking back to his pickup, an extended-cab version with a camper back, dog in one hand by the back of the neck. He thrust the dog through the side window of the cab, and then threw it inside so hard that the dog never touched any part of the interior of the truck until he crashed into the tailgate. I wanted to kick *his* ass.
Meanwhile, my love was still cuddling the kitten in one of her hands, petting it and examining it as best she could. There was no evidence of broken skin, but as delicate as kittens are, there was no question that there might be some internal injury. She spoke to the man running the yard sale, but he was ... unsatisfactory. "They're not really ours. Someone's coming to adopt them this afternoon. I don't have any way to take care of the kitten. Wah, wah, poor ineffective useless me." (Well, he didn't say the last half-dozen words, but they are an accurate reflection of his persona.)
She told him the kitten needed to be taken to a vet *right now.* He dithered until she told him, a healthy dollop of scorn in her eyes, that there would be no cost to him. She gave him her phone number, and we got into the car and headed for the vet's office (where we'd within the previous two hours spent ~$200 on one of our cats, the dog, and the foster kitten we currently have) with the kitten. The vet, a wonderful lady who gives us a discount on fosters, knowing that we're not wealthy, just animal lovers, saw the kitten immediately, and agreed to admit him, give him painkiller and oxygen, and see what could be done for him. My girl signed all the paperwork to authorize necessary labwork, etc., and we headed back out, knowing we had just obligated ourselves to at least another $200 in expenses for a kitten we had never seen prior to maybe 30 seconds before the attack.
Most people around here - this entire state, as far as I can tell, except *perhaps* in the three cities, plus the neighboring states - for the most part don't leash or otherwise control their dogs. They're left to run free, breed like rabbits, get run over by cars, trucks, semis; to fight one another and stagger home bleeding and perhaps dying. It drives me crazy. They're *worse* about cats. For the most part, cats here run loose, breed freely, and die in a dozen different ways, including torture by teenagers, and probably pre-teenagers. It makes me sick. *We* - she and I - are the local animal rescue group. There's one for dogs in the town 30 miles to the south; one for dogs in the town 45 miles to the east; and that's it in a 100-mile radius. There is nothing for cats. Except us.
I'm rambling on now, pissed all over again. I'll stop.