Samson brought in a rat today, still alive, to show us that he could. He just turned 3 months old. WOW! What a mouser! He brought it to us, and then growled when we tried to get it... and that was when I noticed that the poor thing in his mouth was still very much alive... and also very broken. So I shooed the cat outside, followed him around (while he growled at me), and when he put the rat down and it tried to feebly hobble away on it's two remaining working legs, I hit it on the back of the head with a stick, killing it quickly and more humanely than my hunter cat would have. And then I noticed the STUNNED and broken face of my daughter in the sliding glass door.... Sigh. She has such a good heart, but she really doesn't understand the circle of life yet, nor does she understand putting something out of it's misery. It was a long conversation.
1 comment:
That's one of those tough jobs of motherhood. We used to have an outside cat who would wake us up in the morning by sitting in the bedroom window meowing until we acknowledged that she was a great hunter, as she stood there with a bird hanging from her mouth. It's tough though, to explain to the same child that you've taught that hurting animals is bad, that the cat hunting is just part of nature.
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