One of the Worst Days Ever

Our neighbor's pitbulls killed Chick, our sweet, slow 17-lb tabby today.

He was a great cat, the favorite of pretty much everyone who has ever visited our house. Even people who don't like cats liked him. He was a big cat - not just overweight (which he was, a bit) but big - and extremely gentle. Piper (and more than one friend's kid) have ridden him, poked him in the eyes, pulled his ears, whiskers, or tail, dragged him around, or sat on him. He never retaliated, just sat patiently and occasionally whined for help. He was good company, good for a snuggle, never got into anything, and never fought with the other cats.

We really, really loved him, and what happened today was horrible. We miss him very much. I have spent a lot of the day crying, because this was totally preventable. We have talked to the neighbor many times about his hyper dogs (they almost killed our cat Beckham a couple of months ago) and he didn't do anything. I was too nice to call Animal Control on him. We are very concious of the fact that he is friends with most of our neighbors and I didn't want to start trouble. His dogs have knocked Piper down, scared all our neighbors at one time or another, scratched Piper's face, broken our fence, scratched our back window, and done plenty of other damage. Still we wanted to be nice, give him a chance.

He didn't even apologize. At all. Not even when Ryan took one of the dogs back to him and said "This dog just killed our cat. It killed our pet." Not even so much as a "sorry."

I wish I'd called the cops on his damned dogs the first time they got out. I wish I'd reported it when they knocked Piper down and scratched her face, or earlier this week when they jumped all over me and nearly smashed my $1,000 DSLR camera, or when they jumped all over some poor guy and tried to pick a fight with his Great Dane.

I wish, I wish, I wish...

...I wish I'd done all these things, because then Chick would be waiting by the bedroom door for me right now, as usual.

I don't think I can sleep.

RIP Fortunato ("Chick"), 2001-2009