This is not one of those blogs that I am usually proud of or enjoy sharing.  In fact, it’s more of a rant.  A release of anger and frustration.  A silent call to justice for the victims in this story that will never receive any such righteousness.  A telling of a story more for my own sake than anything else as carrying around the anger was making me crazy in a way that I detest.  I can’t turn it into a lesson or end it with a moral or even hope for positive change.  It’s just a story I need to share and maybe in some small way I can feel like I didn’t allow this crime to be ignored.

As I drove to work this morning, I saw something that made me really heart sick.  There was a tiny black and white kitten dead along the highway.  Traversing a four-lane most of my way to work each day, the sightings of animals hit along the roadway is not a rarity.  Yet something in the sight of this kitten there on the berm was very upsetting and the call to pull over and go back to retrieve it immense.   I regretted not stopping then and would regret it even more so later despite knowing I was too late to make a difference for this little one.

At the time I didn’t understand why I was feeling drawn to stop and scoop up this little body.  I usually stop only for those alive and in need of help.   But there was something just so sad about this little guy ….he was tiny, alone and pitiful.  Also I think in some way I didn’t want other people to see what I had seen and feel what I was feeling.

I wish I had but it wouldn’t have changed this story as it wouldn’t be an hour before I’d hear a voice at my office door saying “Tell me a happy animal story” and see Melissa Winans bursting into tears in my office.  And while this was not the first time I’d seen Missy crying, this time was very different.

In fact the first time I met Missy years ago was in our shelter when I walked in to our cat room and found this lovely young woman standing in front of one cat cage doing exactly the same thing.  Crying.  Not a quiet whimpering either.  Not tears silently rolling down her cheeks.  But all out, gulping sobbing.  The big ugly cry…if that’s possible out of Missy.

Apparently Missy had found a cat she wanted to adopt…a big blue grey guy we named Cattywompus.  And she couldn’t bear to see him in the cage one second longer.  Her boyfriend and now husband, Jim, who I thought then was so sweet for loving Melissa so much that he would do about anything to make her stop crying begged me to let her take the cat NOW!  I’d learn later that he too has a soft spot for cats (all animals really) and that made me love him too.  Something about men that love cats is always very endearing to me.  But that’s another story.  Anyway, Cattywompus would soon become Nicholas “Niki” and live the rest of his heavenly life…8 gloriously spoiled years with Missy and Jim.   That was our first meeting …. in tears.

And here she was again.  In tears…big ones.  The realization hit me in seconds that she traveled the same section of road to work where I had seen the poor tiny kitten and thought immediately that she had seen him too.  I wondered then if this was why I felt compelled to stop and pick him up.  Crap, why hadn’t I?  It might have saved her the pain she was overwhelmed by now.

Yet it wouldn’t have mattered.  She’d also seen what I had not…. other kittens along her route to work that I did not travel.  Her sightings quickly turned the story I had created about how this little kitten had somehow gotten separated from his mother and had wandered onto the dangerous highway into a horrific nightmare of a story that I could hardly bare to imagine.  As if the one I’d created wasn’t awful enough.

Missy had seen four dead kittens scattered on a mile stretch of highway that included an overpass.  It was obvious that some viciously sick person had traveled that route tossing kittens out of their car as they went.

Utter disgust and my stomach turns over as I type these words and try to speed through this part of the story as any lingering on the details makes me sicker still.  The picture in my mind’s eye is not a place I intend to stay for long or take others to.

This isn’t a story about someone that is ignorant of what an animal shelter is or our existence or our policies.  This isn’t a story about someone who is too proud to bring us the unplanned litter of puppies or kittens for fear of being questioned as to why they are giving them up, or didn’t have their pet fixed or asked to make a small donation towards their care.  This isn’t about someone who found a litter and doesn’t know what else to do and leaves them on a stranger’s porch or in the country hoping they will survive.  It’s not even about someone who will in the cover of darkness leave the taped box of kittens at the front door of our shelter in the hopes no one will ever know they abandoned them.

This is about a sick bastard who has no conscience, no sense of right or wrong, lacking of any humanly compassion and is a danger to society.  Beyond an obvious danger to these kittens, this “person” is very ill.  I tried several other words here but all were profanity laced and I was afraid I’d offend someone and just stuck with “person” although I question its applicability.

This monster needs to be found, judged and locked away.  Sadly, the animal cruelty laws in our state are so wholly inadequate in regard to this sort of brutality that to expect ample justice via the law is highly unlikely.

And in the case of this rotten piece of trash even if a life sentence were possible, a lifetime behind bars would be a much kinder punishment than the one that Missy and I have planned.  Trust me, whoever he is better steer clear of these two angry women.  Our justice would fit the crime and be as ugly and brutal as what he did to those poor innocent babies.

To the little ones that I should have gone back hunting for and gathered up and buried with some modicum of dignity in the lovely pasture near my home, I’m sorry.  You deserved that and so much more.

Categories: Animal Neglect and Abuse

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