Flame suit on! Unless you live out in the country and have a barn, that's why you don't allow your cat to roam freely outside.........
As a side note, Sunday morning I passed the same body of a cat lying on the side of a street for the past three weeks whose decomposition has been slowed down due to the sub freezing temperatures....
While the poor cat may have been feral, I can't help but think about the ignorance of the family that may have owned that cat and allowed it to roam outside......
I have to agree. When I was a kid, we lived on a pretty quiet street, and let our cat go outside when it wanted to.
One night, it didn’t come home. We called everywhere, trying to find out what happened. Finally, animal control (called ‘The Pound’, back then) told my grandmother that a cat fitting his description had been found in our neighborhood hanging around with a feral cat that had given birth. They were all picked up by the animal control, when someone called to complain about them.
Our cat had been adopted from the pound, and they gave my granny the name and number of the lady who adopted him.
Grandmother called, and the lady said that the cat had stayed with her a few days, and then escaped; and she hadn’t seen it again. From her description of him and his behaviors, we were sure it was our cat. The woman lived about three miles from us.
Weeks went by. I mourned that cat horribly - I remember sitting in school where we were reading a little primer that had a story about a cat; and I was trying my best not to sob in front of all the other kids. It was the first real loss of my 6 or 7 year-old life.
And then, one night, after about a month, we heard a cat crying outside; our Duke had come back. He was horribly dirty, thin, hungry and thirsty; but it was our cat.
From that moment, I have never doubted the possibility of miracles.
That cat lived to be over 20 years old; I had him until I was about 22. But I can’t believe that even after all this happened, the parents still let him go outside! I guess it’s just the way people thought back then; and he couldn’t be litter-trained.
Fortunately, nothing else bad ever happened. But after I was grown, I never let a cat outside.
=JT