Last night, while I was on the train trip from Hell, my cat found a young rabbit. My wife was home and managed to prevent the half-feral asshole from killing it in the house and put it in a quiet spot in the yard; hoping for the best.
This morning it was still breathbg.
She had to leave early but asked me to handle it. I tried giving it some water with a straw, and I didn’t see any obvious injury, but he laid there breathing hard.
So I put on my welding gloves and got a plastic grocery bag. I gently picked it up and cradled it in the bag until it stopped moving.
I am a monster. Hate me.
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What I notice is humans generally feel bad when hurting an animal, but that thought disappears when it comes in plastic wrap at the grocery store. We are an odd society
I’ve raised chickens and pigs and don’t mind eating them. But a poor little hurt bunny is different.
managed to prevent the half-feral asshole from killing it
I’m sad this happened to you, but people keep cats as pets to rid the place of rodents. Your cat probably does this on the regular, and showed you this one because it was extra proud of it.
You minimized that creature’s suffering. That you feel how you do is evidence contrary to your assertion. You did your best in a shitty situation, and I could only be proud of person who did so. Sad. Empathetic. But proud.
It’s fine mate, but fuck cats. And before someone says it, indoor cats aren’t the solution, they need exercise or they get sick of random shit. The answer is no cats period
I found a wounded squirrel lying on a walk path a few years back. I first thought it was already dead but upon closer inspection it was still breathing. I didn’t see any visible injuries so I have no idea what had happened to it.
I carried it into the forest, placed it on a stump and crushed its head with a large stick. It was as quick as it can be and I think I did the right thing but god damn I felt shitty about it for multiple days after. Red squirrels are my favorite wild animals around here. I just hate having to be the one who has to make the decision to end a life. I don’t feel like it’s mine to make.
I have an old pet gerbil too and I often wonder what I’d do if something happened all of a sudden and it was obvious it’s in a lot of pain and needs to be put down quickly. The quick way is to just slam it onto the ground at full force but holy fuck I don’t even want to think about having to do that. The alternative is a fabric bag tied around my truck’s exhaust but those are some really uncomfortable final minutes. An enclosed container and a bottle of nitrogen would be the ideal method I believe. That leads to loss of consciousness and suffocation without the sense of suffocating (which is triggered by excess carbon dioxide).
In my truck I carry a hatchet for just this reason. A friend had to strangle a dying racoon once because they didn’t have anything to hit it with.
I believe our purpose is to do the best we can in the environment around ourselves. The place we can make significant change. So that usually means your house, land and community.
Sometimes being a shepherd of your local area requires you to make hard choices like that. The bad thing to do would be leave the rabbit to suffer. You did the right thing.
I hope you consider keeping your cat in the house after this. House cats are an invasive species that absolutely devastate (and, on an individual level, torture) local wildlife for literally no reason. I know you didn’t mean to do this, but the rabbit nonetheless suffered horribly and died because you or someone in your household let “the half-feral asshole” be outside the house; I hope you recognize going forward that you have the agency to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
You’re not a monster; I don’t hate you. Your reaction shows you care, and I hope your future decisions reflect that.
(I could be misreading this, but the way I interpreted it is that the cat dragged the rabbit in from outside. If the rabbit wandered in the house, obviously disregard this.)
So basically I think you are right about keeping cats inside only, but if a cat has been an outside cat their entire life it is kind of cruel on them too. They will also just be the extra amount of asshole to complain about it. So I’d say, next cat needs to be an inside cat but if you have one that is very used to going out, I’d understand not doing that.
Saying this as an owner of an inside only cat.
it is kind of cruel on them too.
No, it is not. They’ll get used to it, and they’ll statistically have considerably better health outcomes. Moreover, being blunt, it isn’t your prerogative to send out your little monster to terrorize and slaughter local wildlife as their plaything because you think they’ll be bored or cranky.
They will also just be the extra amount of asshole to complain about it.
Even granting based on nothing that this won’t ever change, that’s your responsibility to deal with as a pet owner. You created the problem; you can deal with the consequences without making it everybody else’s problem. If my aggressive dog is upset he can’t go chase my neighbor’s dog around their yard, the answer isn’t “fuck it, just let him out; I can’t deal with his complaining, and frankly it’s pretty cruel to keep him cooped up when he’s like this.”
You are not a monster
You are not a monster
You are not a monster
You are a monster, but only because you let your cat out.
Rabbits (and small prey animals in general) try to hide their injuries. Rabbits are basically as much lean muscle as nature can fit on the lightest and most delicate skeleton, they can snap their own spines from the momentum of their hind legs if they kick against the air hard enough. This animal probably had a debilitating injury, and you saved it from being another cat’s torture puppet for a few hours, or from dying of exposure over the next few days.
If you feel really bad about what happened, keep your car indoors. There are plenty of rabbits out in the wild, and you cat will get another one, and you’ll need to do this again and again.
Last week I went out the front door to grab the mail and was treated to the vision of a dismembered bunny corpse lying in our front yard. Crow, maybe?
I turned around, grabbed a plastic bag, picked up the body, threw it away, and never said a word to my family.
It’s hard, sometimes, and lonely. But we’re here. You’re not alone.
Also, it sucks.
It could be a coyote, fox, or hawk also. Lots of predators city people seldom see living around you.
No guts anywhere around, so hawk is possible, but I think anything land-bound would have had to leave a trail.
You’re not a monster. I’m sorry you had to do that.
I’ve had to do similar before. When I was 16 I was learning to drive with a friend’s dad out in rural Australia. There were a bunch of ducks crossing the road at one point; I stopped to let them pass, but after they moved on and I started rolling forwards one duck turned around and tried to attack the car, resulting in me hitting it. I couldn’t even look out the rear view mirror at it but my friend’s dad did, and told me it was still alive but very mangled. He gently told me to reverse back over it and keep on driving, which I did, and then we drove in silence for the next fifteen minutes.
I felt absolutely awful about it (and still do, despite it happening almost 2 decades ago) but I know that leaving it in the road dying slowly would have been a far worse fate.
I hope you take some solace in the fact that you did the right, albeit difficult, thing for that rabbit.
That sucks. Years ago, I had a single small mouse somehow make it into my upper-floor apartment and get caught in a glue trap.
Spoiler
I crushed its skull with a bottle.
Not fun, especially for an animal lover, but a pretty fast and humane end, considering limited options on-hand…
Avoid glue traps. Snap traps are the best unless you have a huge infestation.
Absolutely. But if you have to use capture/glue traps, please do the humane thing and put them out of their misery (or release them elsewhere). Don’t let them slowly starve to death…
The real monsters are the ones who either hurt animals for fun, or hunt them but suck at it so now there’s an injured creature in the wild who will hurt until a predator manages to find them and end the suffering.
You did what you could with what you had. Sounds like it went as peacefully as possible. And for what it’s worth, it left maybe knowing someone was there with it trying to help. Probably not, but maybe.
Hey man, that’s really rough. You did the humane thing and ended its suffering.
