Somebody hit a kitty in front of my house, in the early hours of the morning. When I found her, rigor had already set in. Whoever hit her left her there for dead. But I don't think she died all that quickly.
And before anybody starts in on me, yes, I know today is recall election day in Wisconsin. I would like you think about this: how we treat the weakest among us speaks volumes about the kind of people and the kind of society in which we live. Whether someone actually decides to do the right thing when it's actually easy tells me a lot about people, and what we can expect of them in their functioning in society. Right about now, I am ready to rip somebody apart because what this lovely little morning incident tells me about the people in this town.
Alright, now I that I am below the squiggle, I can let it rip:
I AM FUCKING MAD AS HELL AND TOTALLY DISGUSTED AT HOW WORTHLESSLY SOME PEOPLE CAN BEHAVE.
Yes, do not mess with the pootie/woozle people, because they usually have alpha personalities and will shred you in a heartbeat.
Somebody hit the pretty black kitty in our neighborhood. My street is a busy one, and the speed limit is STILL ONLY 25 MPH. The hospital is near here. We get really fast traffic sometimes, usually emergency vehicles on urgent business. I can forgive them for that, they're on missions of mercy. But I doubt it was one of them who hit this girl. My street is the main drag out of town for the lunatics who commute to Washington, DC, Annapolis and Baltimore. (Yes, I called them lunatics, because they drive like lunatics. This isn't Rockville Pike or the BW Parkway, assholes. It's not a multi-lane highway. It's a two-lane residential street with on-street parking.) Their jobs are sooooooo important that they can't stop and at least knock on a door or two, find someone who might know about the cat, whether she was owned by someone or was part of a monitored feral colony? I know it's too goddamned much to ask that they REALLY do the right thing, pick up the kitty and make a detour to the local veterinary clinic just four blocks away. But for pity's sake, they hit her right in front of my house. And my husband was awake early enough to have heard a knock on the door or the doorbell and answered the door, since he had the opening shift today.
This little girl might have been saved if the first-class rat-bastard who hit her had done the right thing. At the very least, a trip to the vet would have saved her some suffering. When I found her, the only impact mark I found was on her hip. The asshole probably broke her hip or her back, caused internal bleeding, and it probably took a while for her to die. I think she managed to live at least long enough to drag herself towards my curb. Doing the right thing would have cost said asshole maybe a whopping 5 or 10 minutes. Like they can't, and won't, make up that time driving like fucking bats outta hell on US 50. I know they do, because sometimes I have to put up with their insane driving home while running end-of-the-day errands.
But no, they are in too big a goddamned hurry. Bad enough these jerks break the 25 mph speed limit, doing 40 in their rush to get out of here. But they hit this cat and left her for dead. And then, similarly too-busy-to-give-a-damn jackasses couldn't be bothered to slow down when they saw me step off the curb to retrieve her corpse. Nice. What the hell is wrong with people? They can't do the right thing for the least among us.
And yes, I've done the best I can. I buried her in my backyard, just outside the fence. Swinging that pickaxe to get through the hard-packed soil didn't do my neck and shoulders much good. That accounts for about 1/3 of my pissed-off mood right now. Next, I'll make flyers for the neighborhood, in case she belonged to somebody, in case she was loved and will be missed. Oh, and the real kicker? There's a litter of black kittens in the neighborhood that might be hers, and I need to find them and get them to the local no-kill shelter, just on the off chance that she was feral. So that hopefully the kittens won't die, too.
The more I see of humanity, the more I prefer the furkins.....
4:20 PM PT: I just ran the first batch of notices around the neighborhood. I checked the place where I'd seen tiny kittens the other day, and fortunately they all look old enough to eat kibble. Sot hat is one less issue to deal with here. A good thing, because I know nothing about bottle-feeding kittens.