The perils of being a crazy cat lady

So, I have this "pride" of cats that live in the neighborhood. They are here much of the time, because being the crazy cat lady that I am, I feed them, regularly. Every morning, and in the evening when I get home from work, they are there, waiting for me. I don't want to go into how many there are, because I really don't want to see the number myself.

Anyway, last weekend, one of the mother cats (she has 4 kittens) was injured badly.(She is in the picture here, near the center of the photo, the patchwork Calico) We think the back half of her body was run over by a car. She lost the use of her back half entirely. She has been dragging herself around with her front legs only. We called the police, and an officer came to the house, he was going to help us catch her so we could take her to OSU animal hospital. Well, who knew a 2 legged cat could run so damn fast!!! Our neighbor, who feeds them on occasion as well, called Animal Control on Tuesday. Well, even they couldn't catch her. So, she has been dragging herself around like that for an entire week.

My husband, Beau, saw her this morning and called me to let me know she was in the front, dragging herself to bathe in the sunshine. I went out side about 2 hours later, and saw her lying in the grass. Upon closer inspection, I discovered the inevitability that we knew was coming. The poor little mama kitty had died. Heart broken, I found a plastic bag and a small box and lifted her from her happy sunny final resting place and put her empty vessel in the box. Now, she is happy and whole once again and chasing blue-jays under the trees in our backyard. At least, that's what I am telling myself. She was a tough little cat. Over the summer she had been attacked by a hawk and had a big chunk of the front of her neck torn out. I didn't think she would survive that. But she did, and she had 4 cute fluffy mouths to feed shortly thereafter. Her kittens, while not fully weaned, are big enough to eat dry cat food on their own. Thank goodness for that, or I would be nursing kittens around the clock. ( Oh, no, seriously, I would have done it too.) It is emotionally draining to have to clean up the debris left behind by the circle of life, but I had to be strong and take care of it. Then, I had to break the sad news to my neighbor. With tears in his 80 year old eyes, he said "Thank you , friend" I just smiled and told him to take a nap and think about her chasing those damned blue-jays." He smiled and nodded and closed his door, and I walked off with the box and came home. That was about 30 minutes ago.