I hate that my cat doesn't just kill them and eat them. Why must they play with their food!
At first I wondered if I could save him/her. I held the poor thing in my hand and inspected him/her. It's heart was still beating but it was motionless. One eye closed, one gruesomely popped out of it's socket. Some skin torn from on of it's legs and punctures throughout...
Would it even survive this? Could it? As I held it in my hands it's cold little body seemed to begin to take comfort. It opened it's eye and looked at me. I petted it and it seemed to rest again...
I didn't know what to do at that point. My husband said I was prolonging it's suffering and I thought about my hamster, Popeye, from long ago, who only had one eye and lost a leg... he was happy... but he didn't have internal injuries or a punctured lung.
There was blood on my hand coming from it's popped out eye and some from it's mouth. My husband was right and I knew it.
I've ended suffering before but this was a little mouse and option I thought of seemed so violent. I recalled a time when I tried to save a mouse from a sticky trap but didn't know you need to use oil not water and I accidentally drowned it. I think I cried the night through... I was a teenager then.
Drowning seemed the least violent option and I was right. By the time I made this choice the mouse was chirping. I sensed it was a cry for help, a cry of pain, and oddly one of relief that he was no longer being battered and eaten alive. What a horrifying experience for the mouse while thrilling for my cat.
I do encourage the cats to hunt because mice and other rodents here destroy my garden, and pantry. More mice also equals more snakes and I really do not want a rattle snake encounter with my dogs and cats...
But is this selfish of me? I do not hate them I just let nature take it's course. Predators and prey. But I do feel it, the pain... As humans we think we are above it all but we are not, and I can empathize completely.
I filled a bowl with warm water half way. I didn't want to shock this creature with cold water. And I submerged it. My husband had asked if I wanted him to do it but I had already started, plus I was the one that couldn't leave the mouse to be eaten, why would I put it onto my husband to clean up my mess?
As I held the mouse under, I felt my husband's hand on my shoulder for support, rubbing my shoulder gently ad I told the mouse it was okay and to be free of it's broken vessel, and that I was sorry.
He was so weak that he did thrash about a bit but not as violently as my husband expected. He said, "It's not like the movies." I told him when I accidentally drowned a mouse while trying to save it, it did thrash violently, this little guy was just so very weak and already had fluid in it's lungs that he almost very easily gave in.
My cat was no longer interested in it as it was not his kill and I knew that so I buried the little mouse in the yard. Circle of life, back to nature.
I asked my husband if he thought I couldn't do it and he said he didn't think I would be able to handle it. I do not think he was surprised though.
I thought about it, how people have called me an angel when I saved animal lives, or when I have helped others. I wondered about my choice because it really was not pleasant in the least. But I opted to be an angel of death. I have only done this once before when an animal got ran over.
And then I felt compelled to share my experience. Perhaps as a form of punishment? After all, some people would consider this cruel and I expect hate. Or perhaps for comfort, because it did suck to go through that, to decide that... perhaps I am trying to make sense of why I couldn't just leave it alone.
Normally if I catch it early enough I release the rodents far from my house. But this one was almost a goner.
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