A Dog killed The Cat

I live with my family in Sydney, but my work is based at Queanbeyan, about three-hour drive from my Home.  Hence, I have rented a granny-flat (one bedroom flat – detached from the main house) for my stay in Queanbeyan.  On the average I spend about three nights a week at my flat.  The Land Lords are Tracey and John, a young couple, probably in their forties. 

The day I moved in, and while unloading my stuff from the car, a black cat with three legs got into the flat meowing loudly.  Its handicap did not seem to limit its movements.  It went into the bath room, the living room and the bed room, as if it was the land lord, showing me the flat.  Once I finished unloading, I shooed it out of the flat.  Later in the afternoon, I met John, who said in a firm but friendly tone that I should not entertain the cat in my flat.  That was okay with me – I do not consider myself a pet-lover.  Whenever, I went to my flat during the past 15 months, the cat would get up, limp around and meows to welcome me.  Once when my Land Lords were on a holiday, I fed the cat for a day.  My attachment to the cat was nothing more.

Yesterday, when I walked back to the flat after work around 4:30 pm, and as I neared the flat, I saw my neighbor waving at me.  Well, that’s what I thought, but in fact she was signalling a pick-up to stop.  The pick-up went passed me and stopped in front of the main house.  The pick-up was from the City Council, and its passengers were two Rangers, a man and a woman.  They got off the pick-up, and started a conversation with my neighbor, who pointed a dog to them.  I am not an expert on dog breeds, but I think it is a kind of a Terrier.  There was a leash, but it appeared to have severed from an anchor.  The dog was calm but looked menacing.  One of the Rangers got hold of the leash.  Just in front of the dog was the cat – dead.  I could see the flesh of the cat, and redness around the dog’s mouth and jaws.  I could easily figure out what had happened.  I started to wonder whether the cat became an easy victim, because of its handicap.  Else, it could have probably run away and climbed a tree.

My neighbor was visibly upset, approached me and said that the cat gave a good fight.  Not sure it meant that she saw the cat fighting for its life, or she was deducing from the state its body was in.  I have never spoken to her before, and was not sure what I should say in return.  Our conversation ended there. 

The Rangers spoke softly, showing respect to the deceased, and their faces were glum.   They got busy, photographing the dog and the cat.  They also ran a metal detector over the cat and the dog, and found that the dog had a chip installed in its body, but the cat did not.  Their pick-up had two pens and a stairway, stuck underneath.  One of the Rangers opened a pen, drew the stairway, guided the dog into the pen, and secured it.  The other took a plastic bag, wrapped the cat, and put it in the second pen.  The Rangers left their contact details for my Land Lords in the mail box, and asked me to convey the bad news to my Land Lords.  Later, when I conveyed the bad news to John, he kept on repeating that he was upset.  I patted his back, and left him to break the bad news to Tracey.

I was sad that the cat was mauled to death.  The incident reminded me of the day when I watched a pigeon dying in Delhi (http://prathapar.blogspot.com.au/2013/01/death-of-pigeon.html).  Just like the shoe polisher who looked after the dying pigeon in Delhi, the Rangers and my neighbor acted humanely and took care of the dead cat, and the disturbed dog.  

The way people react to death is the same, irrespective of where the person lives - in a developing country or in a developed country.  People are just the same – there’s Godliness within every one of us.