We had a cat for about 15 years that moved cross-country with us and lived in three states. She was a great cat. We had her since we were young children and she was a kitten and she entertained us endlessly with crazy, playful cat games such as jump in the empty grocery bag, chase the ping pong ball, chase the tail in circles, etc. She was intelligent and we trained her to perform tricks: sitting, shaking hands and speaking before dinner and jumping for the doorknob to go out. She was totally loving and would rub your legs when she wanted her back scratched or would curl up beside you and purr. But she was always an accomplished hunter and explorer and would be seen climbing narrow ledges, crossing tree branches, jumping across chasms and bringing home dead (or half dead) lizards or small birds or mice that she had captured.
Like all of us, my mom loved that cat. The final years of the cat’s life were spent in San Diego, which was cat heaven. There was a huge rocky hill behind our house, covered with vegetation and animals, including a couple of foxes that gave birth to a litter of kits one year and our cat often watched them respectfully from a distance – they were no threat to her and she was no threat to him, they just shared the same hill in the daytime, though our cat came inside and slept in luxury at night.
One day she didn’t come home. The next day either. Obviously something was terribly wrong. Pets don’t just disappear. Most likely she’d been hit by a car. So, eventually, my mom went walking up and down the streets looking for the body. She didn’t find her there, so she began scouring the rocky hillside. Finally, she discovered a few tattered remains of her under a bush, where she’d apparently been killed and partially devoured by a coyote (that happens to dogs and cats from time to time in So Cal).
It was really, really sad. We rationalized (or at least I did) that she had lived a long, full life and perhaps it’s better for a wild animal to die at the hands of another wild animal rather than being hit by a car. But it still sucked. She’d been a long, loving, loyal and entertaining companion. Anyone who’s never had a cat and thinks they are too independent and weird and alien, has no idea. That’s completely wrong. Cats can be fantastic companions, ours had been, and it was hard seeing my mom’s loss.
The loss of a pet can be every bit as traumatic as the loss of a human friend or acquaintance. In the end, there’s not much you can do, though, but to understand that it is a huge loss and try to be supportive and compassionate.
