Bye-bye Bad Boy!

I just wanted to take minute to say good-bye to a cat I never wanted, but who wormed his little way into our family.

We moved to our new house in the country ten years ago. About a month after moved, I went outside and saw a huge flock of trumpeter swans resting in the field across from our home. As I watched I noticed a small buff colored cat sneaking up on them. I thought, "What in the heck does that cat think he is doing?" Of course, he never caught a swan, but we continued to see him roaming the fields near our house for the next 4 or 5 years. According to neighbors, he was the patriarch of a dwindling feral cat colony and not a cat to be messed with... thus the name Bad Boy Kitty!

One day, as I drove along the country road, I noticed Bad Boy curled up under a stand of poplar trees. It was January, getting dark and starting to snow. I stopped and went over to him. His eyes were swollen shut with infection and he had a gash in his back leg. Anazingly, he let me pick him up and carry him home. He ate some cat food and spent the night in our laundry room. My two domesticated cats acted as if I had brought Charles Manson into the house! I could see their point. Bad Boy was filthy and smelled awful.

I took him to the vet the next day. They sedated him, treated his infections, bathed him (twice!) neutered him, vaccinated him and sent him back with me and instructions to give him antibiotics for ten days. So he spent the snowstorn in our house, eating canned catfood with antibiotics mixed in, snoozing by the woodstove, creating huge messes in and around the cat box and generally making a pest of himself.

When the snow melted and the antibiotics were gone, I opened the door to set him free. He instead chose to head back to the couch where he remained for the next six years!

Last week he got sick and tested positive for FIV. I struggled about what to do. He was so independent and a darned impossible cat to medicate, especially since he wasn't eating. I asked for a sign and Friday I stepped outside to see the field covered with trumpeter swans. The first I have seen this winter! I knew he wanted to be among them again, so we had him put to sleep today. He is buried in that field, under the cedar tree where he was most likely born.

Later this spring, his spirit will fly north with the swans, and come back to me every winter.

Bye Bye Bad Boy. We will miss you.

Lisa, John, Chelsea, Kody, Jade, Spooky (well, maybe not Spooky), Sevyn and Shamus.

LisaB
I am so sorry for your loss of Bad Boy. You gave him years of happiness in the good home he needed and deserved. Cherish your happy memories of him.

Bless his bad boy heart, he knew what side his bread was buttered on! Bless you for taking this bad boy in and proving even the bad ones deserve love and can be loved. Take comfort in knowing you probably not only extended his life by six years, but in doing so you made every minute of that six years vastly more comfortable than his entire previous life had been.

Lisa - Your story of bad boy kitty warmed my heart. I will think of him in the Spring and Winter when I hear the wings fly by.

Thank you all for replying so kindly to my message about Bad Boy Kitty. He was certainly his own cat and brought a certain perspective to our lives. He thoroughly enjoyed both halves of his life: as a feral cat overseeing his domain of field and forest, and as a lazy tom sleeping and passing gas in front of the woodstove.

The swans have yet to fly north so I know he is still with me. I don't have any pictures of him scanned. He was not a very photogenic cat. Whenever I pulled out the camera, he usually started licking his hind end!

One kind of interesting note, the three times I have walked over to his grave beneath the cedar tree the dogs have run ahead of me and, by the time I get to the tree, they are both staring directly at the branch that hangs out over his grave. I have looked for any birds or squirrels that might be in the tree but there is nothing I can see. When I ask, "Where's Bad Boy?" They both stare directly at that branch, then look at me like they are saying "Right there! Can't you see him!?" I have tried this under other trees and they look at me like, "What kitty? Where?" I am convinced they see something that I don't.

Lisa. I truly believe that our animal friends see things on another plane that we do not. Please continue to find comfort for yourself.