Is This Your Cat?

Started a nice beach walk from Slip Point yesterday. Found this cat in a plastic bag on the beach.

Cat on beach

Is this your cat? It's a large, black-and-white cat. I don't know the gender; we didn't dig around in there much.

There was also this pair of flannel pajama pants, and what looked like medical gauze, two pads of it. Was that a chemical smell?

The bag and its contents weren't soaked in seawater. It was oddly dry.

We think that the owner, unable to pay for the medical needs of a sick cat, might have chloroformed and drowned it. The paw-printed pants make us think this might have been the case. People are desperate up here, and have to make hard decisions for family members.

OR, somebody did this to somebody else's cat. We turned over the body (no, I'm not saying "carcass" about somebody's pet) to local law enforcement. For one thing, we can't just go bury it in the woods, because unless we put it down 6 feet or so, something hungry will dig it up - and if not for reasons of decency, then that domestic animals can spread diseases to wild animals, and back again.

The police sergeant said the Sheriff's office has a vet that will examine the animal to discover the cause of death.

He also said the Sheriff's office been dealing with a very nasty business with pet deaths in a neighborhood in Forks.

We lived in a poisoning neighborhood in Bremerton. Back then, the cops didn't care about animal abuse. But since then, the link has been made between animal abuse and someone psyching himself up for abusing humans. 

Cat in bag, and pants. Junior helping.

There's been a rash of missing cats around Clallam Bay, including our neighbor's beloved "Gus," a little tabby Manx cat.

We assumed this was the result of the refugee predators trying to find food after being driven from their homes by the nearby clearcut, but we don't know of any mountain lions or coyotes that use plastic bags. So, if somebody is killing cats, the cops know, and you don't need that grief.

Paw pants

No, we don't know the gender of the cat. We didn't poke around in the bag much, because we have cats ourselves, and diseases can spread, if any exist in the bag.

We're sorry this happened, especially if an owner felt so desperate, with no place to bury a pet, that he (or more likely "she," with those pants) had no other option but a water burial. The pants hint at affection, rather than revenge.

However, there is a strange logic in the minds of people with pets or even small farm animals around here. When an animal is sick or even if the owner can't keep them, they won't take them to the Humane Society, "Because they might kill them." These people miss the word "might." There's a BETTER than 50/50 chance an animal will survive, or find a new owner, or at least have quiet last days. If they kill the animal themselves, it's a 100% chance the animal will die. Do they think it's better to be killed by Mommy? 

There are resources in the area, and the Humane Society knows them all. Contact them.

Oh, and the woman on the beach who thought we were the kind of people who would laugh at the remark, "There's a lot of my neighbor's cats I'd like to do that to!" and "Well, don't you feel like that some time?" -- no, we don't feel like that sometime. The times we had trouble with marauding dogs killing animals in our yard, we used the police and fences. We're not the sort of trash who would kill our neighbors' pets and cowardly try to hide them - or think it's funny. What is WRONG with you?)

Unwatered Wine

The Greeks said not to drink unwatered wine, for it would lead to madness. I'm snorking down the Gallo Paisano with no care for Homeric safety regulations.

Mostly it's because we're still on death-watch for Hector. I have a million things to do, and can only circle uselessly around them. Or watch Hector to see if he will even eat a smidgen of food. Or to see if he wants me to put on his green leash and let him all rickety pull me around the yard.  The other night he did it in the dark, three times through the working wood-pile.  No doubt to lose me so he could go die under the house.  I'm sorry, but it's the only thing I'm not letting him do.  Mr. Weird is now Mr. Flat-ass Stubborn. Anyway, after two and a half months, all the grief of my life -- humans as well as animal, including a terrible loss and a missed opportunity recently -- is circling my head and turning me into a vegetable (this is drunk writing, so I'm not taking responsibility for any of it).


Ran into a very dear friend on the beach today, who said that their household fell apart as their old dog died.  So I don't feel so lost and stupid about it now.

She had smoked rabbit.  We swapped for our smoked salmon.  Then we spent the evening blathering and laughing. She's one of the few people up here on my intellectual level, and her daughter is a living spark.  I, of course, did not recognize the kid.  How am I supposed to recognize someone I could once pick up and carry and who can now look me in the eye?  Some kid is going to figure out that adults -- especially we old farts -- cannot recognize them before and after the growth spurt and scam us to dead.


Next step, if I can just get anything done:  build the basis for the bee-hives.  I love honey.  The 3 hens are laying what comes to an egg a day.  The seeds just came in the mail.  With honey, eggs and veggies and the occasional fish, we'll have more than enough to eat and swap.

I may have talked myself into milking the old farmer's cows for him.  As he said, his 80 + years hands can't do it any more, and he's had to let the cows dry up.  If I do, it's half the milk, and I don't care how that makes me sound.  CHEESE.  And yogurt.  Which I'll share with him, too.  Fuck, I'm becoming a farmer.


And another shot of the young whale on the beach the other day. Note how close to the shore. It shelves off very abruptly.