January 3, 2011

Last night my son, found our cat outside by the cellar door, limp, and barely responsive. He moved him to our pourch, where he remained, painfully meowing. We brought him inside, it seemed as if he was choaking on something. But nothing was blocking his airway. I pressed on his belly and chest, and he did not wince or scream out in pain.
We wrapped him in a towel, and waited out the night. This morning, he hadn't moved and was still meowing in pain. My wife took him up to the vet, unfortunately we were too late. They could have run several tests, but they told her, by the time we find out what the problem is, there really would be nothing they could do to help him. When asked what they thought was the problem was; poison.
We live on a stree that only has like five houses...only one house has debris and junk laying out all over the place and accessible to any animals that come and go. My neighbors. Balboa, doesn't typically leave the front porch, but as warm as it had been, I'm sure he ventured away. You have to understand that, even though he was a year old, he was still the size of a kitten. He wasn't too adventurous.
So, we made the decision to put him down. He could have suffered for the next couple of days, but none the less would have passed away by that time.

Every day I wake up and I wonder what my day is going to be like. I wonder who I am going to meet. I wonder what the world is going to throw at me. Well, I wasn't prepared for today. It broke my wife's heart to have to put the little kitty down. What was worse, is that we had to explain to our three and four year olds what death is and where Balboa was at and why he wasn't coming back home. I wasn't ready for that today. It broke my heart to have to tell them that their little kitty friend wasn't coming home. To tell them that God loved Balboa so much that he wanted him to be his kitty. To see the heartbreak in their eyes and watch them cry.
It was too much.

At the end of the day, I will miss that cat, and I understand it was just a cat. But to my wife and children, it was much more, a part of the family. Someone or something took that away from us. To me, that's unacceptable. To say I am angry about this situation is an understatement. So would say, "It is what it is." Let me tell you something, there is no such thing. The world is the way it is, because we have allowed it to become this way. People are mean, because they chose to be. Nothing is ever what it is, unless we make it that way.

We need to wake up and realize this. We make our world what it is. Everything we do has consequences. Whether my cat was purposely poisoned, or some idiot left antifreeze out, some one allowed this to happen.

We need to make a concious decision to do what we know is right. Make the world what we know it should be...