He first arrived back in January; a cute, but extremely noisy Puggle with a bum leg and a strong tendency to run into the busy road. Since we already had a dog I told the kids we couldn’t keep him, but they secretly named him Maxx and fed him right along with the other animals. That was when the strange happenings began.
Occasionally, he would disappear for a week or so, but much to my chagrin, he kept returning. I told him to go home and stay, but instead he just sat and stared at me through the kitchen window. He stared, and stared, and stared. It was quite unnerving.
A few days later, our beloved dog Lizzie was hit by a truck. She didn’t cross the road very often, but she had taken to following Maxx wherever he went. I couldn’t help but wonder if he deliberately enticed her into the path of the truck, knowing that if she was gone I would be likely to let the kids officially adopt him.
Once we lost Lizzie things got really weird. While I can’t blame it directly on Maxx, I feel certain he was responsible for the baby’s respiratory infection and subsequent hospital stay. And there is no doubt in my mind that having that maniacal dog around is what caused me to gain nine pounds.
On top of that, he started bringing bones into the yard. Big bones still attached by the joints. The kids began poking around in the field where he had been digging, hoping to crack open a long forgotten murder mystery. Two days later that corner of the field was piled high with limbs and branches and they could no longer get to the hole. Coincidence? The police said if we come across a human skull to let them know, otherwise they’re not interested.
Gradually, our cats began to disappear. Slowly at first, until we were down to a papa cat and pregnant mama cat.
One afternoon, in a freak door jamb accident, our daughter fractured her toe in two places. When we returned home from the emergency room we found that mama cat had delivered six tiny kittens. Daughter was ecstatic! She is truly an animal lover and was thankful to have so many kittens to replace the ones we had lost.
She asked if I could help find a place where they would be safe from the dog. I was used to Lizzie’s protective attitude toward new kittens and didn’t really consider Maxx a threat so I told her I would come outside as soon as I wrapped up a couple of things.
Ten minutes later I glanced out the window to see daughter hobbling across the yard in her orthopedic shoe, screaming for the dog to drop the kitten dangling from his mouth. I called for my son and we ran outside, frantically searching for the kittens that had been scattered to various locations. After forty-five minutes our search and rescue mission became a recovery operation. We finally located all six kittens, but only three showed any signs of life.
Feeling like the worst mom in the world, I tried to comfort daughter while we found a safe place on our enclosed front porch to put mama cat and her pitiful little babies. Two survived until dusk, but were too weak to nurse, so we stayed with them throughout the night and fed them with a dropper. They managed to hang on until morning and hope prevailed in spite of the fact that papa cat did not. Sadly, during the night, he had joined Lizzie in pet heaven.
We truly thought the two survivors were going to pull through, however, the next morning when daughter went to check on them, she returned with some disturbing news. All that remained of one kitten were his paws.
Yes, you read that correctly. There was nothing left but three, tiny, dismembered paws scattered around the water bowl. Gives a new twist to the old Mother Goose rhyme about the little kittens who lost their mittens.
Maxx must have sensed our growing displeasure because he disappeared again a few days later and never returned. Then last week we saw him down the road at someone else’s house. Their kids were playing with him and he was wearing a collar. I wish them all the luck in the world. They’re going to need it!
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