Last week we had to surrender our family cat to the Humane Society, where she was put down. It is one of the saddest things we’ve ever had to do, and I’m having a hard time dealing with it.
Our sweet Rambo was four years old and at most times a good cat. Before she was spayed we had an incident where she latched onto my leg with her claws, unprovoked, and a stressful few days followed of trying to calm her down. After she was spayed she went back to her normal self. Until two weeks ago. While in the nursery, with Jack in the crib, I was vacuuming. Jack began crying and I turned off the vacuum. That’s when Rambo attacked me. She lunged at me, latching onto my arm with her teeth. She hung there while I was in shock. Finally, she hissed and howled as she fell off scratching and biting her way down my arm to my leg and even my bare feet. The Ginger came rushing into the room and was able to get her into the hallway and we barricaded ourselves in the nursery.
I stood there shaking, bleeding and crying. All I could think of was what if I had Jack in his bouncy seat on the floor where she could have landed on him or latched onto him. What if I had shaken her off of me so instead of jumping to the floor she jumped into the crib. I am so thankful that Jack wasn’t hurt. I feel that Rambo might have been protecting him since he was crying, or she just was overwhelmed by the noise (however, this wasn’t the first time I’ve vacuumed, causing Jack to cry). I didn’t know the why, but I knew that she couldn’t live with us anymore.
We reached out to every animal shelter in the area, contacted friends and friends of friends, but we could not find a home for her. In good conscious I don’t know how we could have given her to someone knowing that she could possibly attack them. After housing her at a kennel for the week we decided the best option was to take her to the Humane Society, which the other shelters we called suggested. There they decided that she was too much of a risk to have adopted and the best thing was to humanely put her down. I feel awful about this choice. But I’m not sure what else we could have done.
I worked in a boarding kennel for nearly 10 years and have been an animal lover all my life, and with this decision I feel like I betrayed all animals. I am so torn because I know that we could not care for her anymore and I did not want to put Jack in any danger, but I also know that she was a sweet, loving cat most of the time and she deserved to have a long and happy life.
I don’t know what I could have done differently. We made all kinds of efforts to get her used to Jack before we brought him home from the hospital. She seemed fine up to this point and that’s what makes me think we made the wrong decision…something set her off and maybe she’d never do this again, but that MAYBE was too risky for me.
I know that for four years I had a beautiful, sweet cat and she will always be in my heart. She was the first baby for me and the Ginger. We raised her and loved her. I’m not sure what we did wrong, but I do know that we gave her as much love as we possibly could.
On a side note, 85% of cat bites/scratches get infected. I was put on two antibiotics and have not had any problems other than soreness.
It will be many, many years before we adopt another pet. I don’t think I could handle something like this again. I just can’t believe she’s gone.
