When I was little my family seemed to collect a maudlin variety of stray animals. To this day I still do this, with people. It always ends badly. Little disappointed deaths.
One day my dad brought home a kitten he named Tuffy. We kept Tuffy in a box at night to sleep. Early in the morning he would begin to mewl piteously. I was the only one that heard him. So every morning for the short duration that we had him I would go to his box, scoop him out, and cradle him to my chest as I rocked him in our rocking chair. He would stop crying.
The rocking chair is long gone.
One day as we were leaving the house my mom gasped in this horrible way that she often does. Few things really faze me anymore but my mom possesses this amazing ability to gasp and instantly make my stomach drop. She's always had this power over me,
So she gasped and we all looked and my cat, Q-Tip, was coming around the corner of the house with a baby rabbit in her mouth. My mom ran over and took it from her. Unfortunately its spine was broken but it was still alive. I hated my mom a little for this. If she had just let Q-Tip continue on with her grim business it would have been out of its misery.
It lived for 2 1/2 days, cradled in a nest of sheep's skin and kale, its tiny heart beating rapidly any time someone touched it or my sister and I bumped carrots and lettuce against its little teeth, trying to get it to eat, do something. It died in my lap. I was the only witness.
I have witnessed many deaths of animals. For this reason I'm not allowed to have rats as pets anymore.
The worst death was the death of my pleco though. I can still smell the sickly sweet scent of the water which clung to my pores for days afterwards.
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