RIP - Scamp

I just wanted to take a moment to tell you all that Scamper was killed sometime this week.

I put him out Saturday night because he wouldn't leave the little cat alone (because she was in heat) and thought he'd climbed a tree like he used to at the trailer - he'd climb one and stay up there for two-three days or more! I called and called and looked in all of the trees and all of that, to no avail. Finally, yesterday, I decided to ride the bike around and look for him. I put the outgoing mail in the box and saw something about 10' away. My heart sank.

I have no idea what Scamper was doing that far away; the road is about 100 yards away from the house - the front yard is absolutely huge. He may have been chasing something or something may have been chasing him - I don't know. What worries me most of all is how long my poor baby - the cat I'd raised since he was small enough to fit in the palm of my hand - laid there, suffering, wondering where I was and when I was going to come and make it all go away... That's what breaks my heart; that's what hurts me so much.

Before we moved here, that was the very example I used when I was told the cats needed to stay outside more than inside: "The other cats are fine outside," I said - not once, not four times, but at least 2340978 times, "But Scamper's an inside cat; I raised him since he was too small to have been taken away from his mother and he's never been outside before we moved to the trailer. He wouldn't know to move away from a car or that the car wasn't going to stop, etc."

And that's just what happened.

But, besides the fact that we cover pets here sometimes, the reason I'm posting this here is because I kind of think Scamper knew he was going to die here. When we first moved in, he held down the deck - the way he'd held down the porch at the trailer; he'd decided the deck was Scamperland and he simply laid there, daring anyone or anything to challenge that. But after we got moved-in and my parents went home (and their little dogs did, too), there was no one who might challenge him, so he took to the basement and just... sulked there. I tried everything, but he refused to go outside and refused to come upstairs.

Just before this awful thing happened, he finally started coming upstairs, but largely just to sit on the back of the couch in front of the window. Then he shat on the carpet a couple of times because I would not bring a litterbox upstairs, and got into trouble for it, so he took to staying downstairs again. Whenever he came upstairs, he was bizarrely upset and would do this weird, jittery "hop" I'd never seen him do before. It was like the floor was covered with biting ants or maybe tacks or something.

It still hasn't really set in that my little companion is gone. I - literally - keep seeing him out of the corner of my eye. Honestly! It may be the medicine I'm taking, but I keep seeing things in my peripheral vision, and for whatever reason, my brain triggers "Scamper's tail" or that it's Scamper, sneaking around the corner, etc. These visual... whatever - hallucinations? - started very recently, though I can't say if they started before he was killed, because I don't know when he was killed (though I'm pretty sure it was Saturday night, because I let Nyrgle back in late that night/early Sunday morning and called and called for Scamp, too).

I'm not all weepy, and I'm actually not too maudlin; I miss Scamper fiercely, but he was a problem cat who had become more of a burden than a pet. I was going to have him neutered, hoping that would change his bad-ass attitude, but I had to pay all that money to have the little one fixed last month and simply couldn't afford it yet. I had quit treating his ears because he'd started fighting me so hard, scratching me literally to ribbons the month before we left the apartment. If neutering him hadn't worked, I was seriously considering euthanizing him; he had honestly gotten that bad!

In fact, the girl I got him from gave him away specifically because he was such a hassle. She had a houseful of kids and pets and I said "He just needs attention" - which was true. Before Nyrgle came along, he was great! He started out problematic, but I spoiled him so much (it was just the two of us, and I was lonely) that he really took to me. We became very real friends; he minded my every rule and always seemed to know when I needed a cat to stroke - like me, he enjoyed his time alone, so it really worked. But the moment Nyrgle got there, everything changed and he was truly never the same again.

Of course I didn't want him to die, and I sure as hell didn't want him to die so violently (I hope to God it was a fast, at least relatively painless, death!), but Scamper was a real problem cat from the day he was born...

I still miss the poor thing and I'm all emo right now.

© C Harris Lynn, 2009