Last night, while I was on the train trip from Hell, my cat found a young rabbit. My wife was home and managed to prevent the half-feral asshole from killing it in the house and put it in a quiet spot in the yard; hoping for the best.
This morning it was still breathbg.
She had to leave early but asked me to handle it. I tried giving it some water with a straw, and I didn’t see any obvious injury, but he laid there breathing hard.
So I put on my welding gloves and got a plastic grocery bag. I gently picked it up and cradled it in the bag until it stopped moving.
I am a monster. Hate me.
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When I was 16 I killed a bird, a nestling really. I googled how to give it food - I needed to mill some seeds with water into a paste and administer with a syringe. The syringe slipped and the paste went into its throat. It choked to death in my hands. Ever since once a year this episode gives me nightmares. In these nightmares I am a little chick who is choking.
You’re not a monster. You painlessly killed an animal that would’ve died of pain.
But you were trying to do something good. I don’t think you deserve those nightmares
I’m a bad person in general, so the question whether I deserve them or not is not correct. I deserve.
You’re not alone. It was mercy.
Sometimes the greatest gift in life is death.
All things die, even the rabbit knows this.
Do not dispair.
It was a mercy. It sucks it had to happen. But nothing so innocent should suffer so.
I hope you consider keeping your cat in the house after this. House cats are an invasive species that absolutely devastate (and, on an individual level, torture) local wildlife for literally no reason. I know you didn’t mean to do this, but the rabbit nonetheless suffered horribly and died because you or someone in your household let “the half-feral asshole” be outside the house; I hope you recognize going forward that you have the agency to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
You’re not a monster; I don’t hate you. Your reaction shows you care, and I hope your future decisions reflect that.
(I could be misreading this, but the way I interpreted it is that the cat dragged the rabbit in from outside. If the rabbit wandered in the house, obviously disregard this.)
So basically I think you are right about keeping cats inside only, but if a cat has been an outside cat their entire life it is kind of cruel on them too. They will also just be the extra amount of asshole to complain about it. So I’d say, next cat needs to be an inside cat but if you have one that is very used to going out, I’d understand not doing that.
Saying this as an owner of an inside only cat.
it is kind of cruel on them too.
No, it is not. They’ll get used to it, and they’ll statistically have considerably better health outcomes. Moreover, being blunt, it isn’t your prerogative to send out your little monster to terrorize and slaughter local wildlife as their plaything because you think they’ll be bored or cranky.
They will also just be the extra amount of asshole to complain about it.
Even granting based on nothing that this won’t ever change, that’s your responsibility to deal with as a pet owner. You created the problem; you can deal with the consequences without making it everybody else’s problem. If my aggressive dog is upset he can’t go chase my neighbor’s dog around their yard, the answer isn’t “fuck it, just let him out; I can’t deal with his complaining, and frankly it’s pretty cruel to keep him cooped up when he’s like this.”
You’re not a monster. I’m sorry you had to do that.
It really sucks when you have to be the one to finish something like that.
I’m not saying you did anything wrong, and good on you for ending it’s pain but blunt force trauma is a much quicker and more humane dispatch method. I’ve lived in the country so have had to do it a few times.
You minimized that creature’s suffering. That you feel how you do is evidence contrary to your assertion. You did your best in a shitty situation, and I could only be proud of person who did so. Sad. Empathetic. But proud.
Hey man, that’s really rough. You did the humane thing and ended its suffering.
Last week I went out the front door to grab the mail and was treated to the vision of a dismembered bunny corpse lying in our front yard. Crow, maybe?
I turned around, grabbed a plastic bag, picked up the body, threw it away, and never said a word to my family.
It’s hard, sometimes, and lonely. But we’re here. You’re not alone.
Also, it sucks.
It could be a coyote, fox, or hawk also. Lots of predators city people seldom see living around you.
No guts anywhere around, so hawk is possible, but I think anything land-bound would have had to leave a trail.
You might be surprised how light ground predators can be, especially on a lawn.
RFK, Jr would have seen lunch.
This became problematic for me with a mouse trap in the same way. Thing is I learned by lesson with poison when a mouse died in an inobvious location.
You did something. Most would do nothing, or, at the very least, check every so often and hope it’s either dead or gone.
The real monsters are the ones who either hurt animals for fun, or hunt them but suck at it so now there’s an injured creature in the wild who will hurt until a predator manages to find them and end the suffering.
You did what you could with what you had. Sounds like it went as peacefully as possible. And for what it’s worth, it left maybe knowing someone was there with it trying to help. Probably not, but maybe.
I’ve had to do similar before. When I was 16 I was learning to drive with a friend’s dad out in rural Australia. There were a bunch of ducks crossing the road at one point; I stopped to let them pass, but after they moved on and I started rolling forwards one duck turned around and tried to attack the car, resulting in me hitting it. I couldn’t even look out the rear view mirror at it but my friend’s dad did, and told me it was still alive but very mangled. He gently told me to reverse back over it and keep on driving, which I did, and then we drove in silence for the next fifteen minutes.
I felt absolutely awful about it (and still do, despite it happening almost 2 decades ago) but I know that leaving it in the road dying slowly would have been a far worse fate.
I hope you take some solace in the fact that you did the right, albeit difficult, thing for that rabbit.
