⚠️ Trigger Warning ⚠️
"Out On The Farm"
I had a friend that had a farm a good hour or two from the nearest decent sized town/city.. They lived on an old milk/dairy farm, but hadn't had livestock or farmed the land in a few decades.. There were a number of out buildings and barns.. with roughly +300 barn cats on the property... They couldn't afford to feed them all (who could these days?) properly or spay them.. so it wasn't uncommon to see cat's eating dead cats and whatnot.. OK, such is nature, fucked up but I can accept that I guess... Then one day, one god forsaken fucking day I was coming out of the porch and happened to see a perhaps 2 month old kitten frantically chewing on / eating something in the doorway:
I'm not proud of this, the way I reacted at that moment of horror... But the first time I saw that happening (it wasn't the only time I saw cats eating another cat on that property while it was still alive or in the process of dying) I IMMEDIATLY mercy killed the newborn kitten that had been getting its face eaten (it was still very much alive when I pulled the other one off it, in a puddle of blood trying about as much as a week old kitten can to get away from having its fucking face eaten while alive) and ended up shooting the other kitten with a 22LR rifle that was feasting on it's younger sibling..
You Ever Curb Stomp a Kitten? I Have
(and by the fucking god's I wish I'd never had to )This situation INSTANTLY felt horrible on all sides, and I don't mean slightly uncomfortable... I mean I'd literally just had to (quite) effectively flying 2 footed death curb stomp a newborn kitten with its face half eaten off.. as deep down I when I realized what the fuck was happening in front of me, I knew the kitten that had up until 5 seconds before that had been having its face eaten off for lord knows how long... less than 5 minutes atleast, cause I hadn't been outside that long before this, needed mercy killed to stop it's suffering... Still though.. I wish I could have been out there to see the 2 month old kitten steal the little newborn one from the box the other newborns were in.. I could have prevented it had I just went out for a cigarette a few minutes earlier.. Feels bad man.
I'm not even a cat person or anything.. but I'd never go out of my way to harm animals unless it was absolutely justified... and I think by this point on this property, it would have been justified loooong before this personal tipping point for me..
And that the one eating the little one, which I had picked up by then neck and was strangling up against the wall for about... 10 seconds or so, was literally starving to death, I'm ashamed that my knee jerk reaction had me strangling this poor starving kitten, but like, looking back on it now that was one of the maybe 2 or 3 times in my life I lost control and let pure anger take over... I snapped man.. I just fucking snapped. I didn't yell, I didn't scream, I didn't cry... I just came back into control about 10 seconds after death stomping the half face eaten newborn kitty and had this poor other suffering 2 month old kitten with it's eyes half bugged out (not as bad as the newborn kittens mind you, fml, cannot unsee) due to me choking the life out of it... fuck man. Like, what the actual fuck.
Just fucking atrocious situation all around.. After realizing that I was literally strangling this poor larger starving kitten to death, because it was starving and just trying to survive.. fuck man, I can't describe the helplessness, anger and sadness I felt.. hence deciding on shooting it point blank range in the head, less suffering.. but like.. fuck man.. still to this day that initial scene haunts me.
"Alright Dude, We Need to Fucking Talk"
Needless to say after that I sat buddy down and told him we NEEDED to deal with this situation, because I don't give a fuck how much you think you love your 300+ barn cats or how much his mother thinks that buying a bag of no name brand cat food a month for 300+ cats was taking care of them... they'd let it get to the point it was no longer feasible, safe, sane or humane to have that many cats around.. They were literally fucking eating eachother alive.
So we started actively hunting the males with rifles, disposing of newborn litters in the most humane way I could come up with.. and I'll tell you what... it never got easier taking garbage bags full of a dozen or more kittens at a time and drowning them in the marsh at the edge of his property... and then for the cherry on top of that, having to fucking beam any of the the kittens "lucky" enough to have escaped the bag that tried to swim for shore with rocks.. With the thought behind this seemingly horrific act hoping to knock them out so they would drown and not struggle and gurgle trying to stay afloat and survive, it was fucking heartbreaking...
Tried to put on a cool face and like, pretend to laugh about it and put on a face like this shit didn't phase me at all.. But it was entirely an act. I was a late 20's something at this point, a fully grown man.. and watching these little kittens drowning and having to literally take them out with rocks so they didn't struggle / have the last few moments of their life awareness be them gurgling and struggling, it just seemed more humane to fastball pitch a baseball sized rock into their head to knock them unconscious so they didn't suffer as they drowned.. I wanted to fucking cry while we did this... and it wasn't like we did this once.. we dropped atleast half a dozen or more bags of a dozen or so kittens at a time into that marsh.. And picked off the "lucky ones" with stones..
Fuck me man, there is nothing more heartbreaking than sitting there, already feeling like the biggest piece of shit in the world because you're literally drowning a bag full of kittens that did nothing wrong and didn't deserve it, to have a few pop up, screaming / meowing, gurgling, drowning and you have to sit there and watch it and hear it, my heart and soul frankly wasn't built to watch animals suffer.. I couldn't do it man, I picked up a rock large enough to basically for sure crack it's skull with a solid throw and render it/them unconscious for it's final moments..
It was all mercy killing, but that still doesn't make it feel any better, it's just the way it was justified. I'm not worried about going to hell because of this, because hell on earth and the entrance to it is having to watch kittens that didn't deserve the fate they met struggle, scream and slowly gurgle more and more while drowning in front of you... and the lesser evil in that situation being to smash it's head in with a thrown rock while it tries to swim legitimately for it's life. Because I was weak and I couldn't fucking take the sound and sight of these poor little fucks drowning like that in front of me.. Shit is hard man. Shit is really fucking hard.
I'll Never Forget That Summer...
All in all that summer and fall I'd ended up having to kill well over 150 cats and kittens myself, no idea what buddies kill count was.. Didn't care to ask, don't care to ever bring it up to him again..
This is/was/never will be anything I enjoy. I like hunting animals I can eat and feel no joy or satisfaction in killing creatures for sport.. But this wasn't for fucking sport.. This was mercy killing, plain and fucking simple, and to this day I still look back at the day that started it all with that kitten eating another kittens face in front of me and shudder.. I can still hear drowning kittens screaming sometimes when it's super quiet and I'm under high stress. Cannot unsee, cannot unhear, cannot undo. It's something I have to live with. And short of today's share of the story... something I've almost nearly always silently suffered with since that summer.
How anyone who claims they love their animals / cats let shit get like that is beyond me.. Not a knock at buddy and his family.. they are honest to god good people who helped me out a lot in life.. But the way they mismanaged their barn cat issue effectively meant I had to step up and do what none of them had the fucking balls to do.
Spay and neuter your pets people.. please for the love of god spay and neuter your pets..
If not for their sake and happiness, then to prevent poor fucks like me having to step up and effectively become a murderer of animals that frankly didn't deserve it, but also didn't deserve to starve to death or have their faces eaten off while alive.
TLDR
Feel free to call me a psychopath or a monster or a piece of shit or whatever makes you feel better, I'm a kitten killer, but never was it enjoyable or something I shrugged off or took lightly, the weight of such deeds is far greater than most people ever have to carry.. If this is what "doing gods work" feels like or entails then it may very well be harder to care enough to fix problems than it is to ignore it and neglect it till it goes away.. Perhaps the real evil is indifference or lack of action when issues like this are observed.. I don't know.. Maybe this is all cope and I'm a fucking kitten killing monster.. I don't know anymore.. It never felt right or has sat right with me that I as put in that situation.
Most people don't have it in them to "Old Yeller" animals suffering.. Probably for the best honestly.. Because at the end of the day unless you're a complete fucking psychopath or sociopath, there is a very real and lasting toll you pay in your soul for having to commit acts of murder like I did to things as innocent as kittens simply born on the wrong farmyard..
At the end of the day I'd never wholesale slaughter animals in the way I had on that god forsaken farm.. Nothing you can call me on here can make me feel worse than I will for the rest of my life having done what needed to be done.
On another farm you'd still be chasing yarn, but here your life's not fun..
Please Forgive Me, Little Kitties.
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Taking care of animals (and other humans) is not a light task, or responsibility.
Just feeding stray cats, or giving people free money does not help the situation. It just makes the matters worse. The only thing it does is make the people doing it feel good (virtue signalling) in the moment.
If you are going to help an entity, you need to have enough money, resources and time.
You have to have a place for them, you have to be able to take them to the vet, you have to have enough time to pet each one. Don't destroy a creature's life if you do not have all that is needed, by bring them into the world just to suffer.
I am sooo very sorry for your horrible summer. Doing the right thing can often hurt in the moment. REALLY HURT. :*(
Hugs.
Your comment is upvoted by @topcomment
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Your level lowered and you are now a Red Fish!@klye, sorry to see that you have less Hive Power.
A few years ago Marty moved in next door to me. Marty had been a horse rancher and loved fishing for steelhead on the Deschutes River. One day he'd been swept up underneath a logjam in his drift boat, and when he stood to wrangle the boat out from underneath the logs before it got swept underwater and he died, he rammed a steel spike that was poking out of one of the logs down through the top of his head and out his neck. Oregon horse ranchers are tough, and Marty was one of the toughest. Somehow he got himself off that spike, got the boat out and downstream to where the landing was, got a ride to a hospital, and lived.
He wasn't up to horse ranching anymore, though, he explained, so he sold the ranch and retired next door to me. He had an orange tabby he said had been a barn cat he'd taken a fondness to, so Scampers joined him in retirement.
One day his fishing buddy Chuck was visiting and talking steelhead when Marty just flopped to the ground and died. Chuck called the ambulance, and they were there like a shot, because the ambulance station is a block away. The EMT's knew their stuff and they brought Marty back to life right in front of me. Marty was a scrapper, so there was quite a ruckus and a few of us had gathered as folks do. While they loaded the well strapped down Marty onto the ambulance I was standing next to Marty's landlady, and the subject of Scampers came up. I told her not to worry, that I'd take care of Scampers until Marty came back from the hospital.
That night I knew Scampers wouldn't understand to come to my house, so I went out and found him. He'd caught a bird and was in the process of feeding himself, as barn cats do when ranchers underfeed them, so I waited a bit before I gathered him up and took him in. I gave him a can of tuna, so he defo got the idea I was a soft touch when Friskies weren't on the menu.
Well, turns out Marty wasn't a quitter, so he just kept on dying until he died to death, and I now have a orange tabby cat named Scampers. I feed him all he wants, to spare the local birds.
I've seen situations like you found yourself in with starving cats, and I resolved it similarly. It is a terrible thing to have to do, but it's not your fault that you did it. It's your buddy's fault, as it was my buddy's fault I had to do it, because he couldn't. It's to your credit you solved the problem, and I suppose mine as well that I did, but it's a caution about folks that get themselves in those situations. Bad judgment is one thing, but judgment that bad is hard to comprehend. Men with so little self control they cause such suffering have something wrong missing inside them.
I just know I can't ignore such suffering, and whatever it is that makes us end such horror when we're confronted with it is essential to humanity. I never talked to my buddy again, although I didn't say why (if he'd been a good friend I would have given him an earful, but he was just a neighbor of mine), and did tell him if his cats got out of hand again to come get me - but not to let that happen. He died not too long after that, so it never came up again. Maybe he squared up and got the animals he had left spayed.
All I know about your actions is that you also cannot abide that suffering and will yourself endure the suffering necessary to end it. That's good people in my book. I guess I followed you for good reasons.
Thanks!