Hey everyone! I’m new here and just wanted to come on here and put my thoughts down since one of the ferals my family takes care of was found dead in our yard
We have a small family (all of them TNR’d) of around 6 cats (3 of them around 5+ months old) and we love them to bits. The oldest (Plomita) is a girl around 2-3 years old and is the mother of 2 cats, Ojitos and Blacky. She’s also starting to slowly separate herself from the others, so we rarely see her. But earlier this year an unknown feral male came and she had another 3 kittens. Blacky also had kittens (from the same feral), but only one survived out of 5. We took that one in to be our first indoors cat. The ones living outdoors are Blacky, Ojitos, and 3 other kittens (Leo, Ceos, and Yoshi). They’re all siblings.
But just a month ago we saw a new cat join in on their mealtime. He (we assume a he, we never got a chance to look) looked so scruffy and dirty that we fell in love with him. He was pretty hostile to the other kittens but soon he started joining the kittens and Ojitos (the father figure of the kittens). He’d let himself be cleaned by them and even played with the toys we set up outside. He looked so happy to be essentially adopted into this small family.
But this weekend we noticed he never showed up with the the rest of them in their morning meal. It wasn’t until today that we found him dead. We found him outside in our backyard just lying there... My mother is still in tears and I’m very heartbroken. We have no idea how he died but it pains me to think about what he went through. He was around the same age as the kittens, so who knows what happened before we met him. It just breaks my heart... I know I should be happy that we gave him an enjoyable life until his death, and that he wasn’t out alone with no family, but the fact that it was so short makes my heart hurt. I’m starting to cry as I’m typing this...
Ugh, this is the worst. I’m sorry if this post is unnecessary, I just needed to write my thoughts down since if I didn’t I wouldn’t be able to cry as I am right now.
We have a small family (all of them TNR’d) of around 6 cats (3 of them around 5+ months old) and we love them to bits. The oldest (Plomita) is a girl around 2-3 years old and is the mother of 2 cats, Ojitos and Blacky. She’s also starting to slowly separate herself from the others, so we rarely see her. But earlier this year an unknown feral male came and she had another 3 kittens. Blacky also had kittens (from the same feral), but only one survived out of 5. We took that one in to be our first indoors cat. The ones living outdoors are Blacky, Ojitos, and 3 other kittens (Leo, Ceos, and Yoshi). They’re all siblings.
But just a month ago we saw a new cat join in on their mealtime. He (we assume a he, we never got a chance to look) looked so scruffy and dirty that we fell in love with him. He was pretty hostile to the other kittens but soon he started joining the kittens and Ojitos (the father figure of the kittens). He’d let himself be cleaned by them and even played with the toys we set up outside. He looked so happy to be essentially adopted into this small family.
But this weekend we noticed he never showed up with the the rest of them in their morning meal. It wasn’t until today that we found him dead. We found him outside in our backyard just lying there... My mother is still in tears and I’m very heartbroken. We have no idea how he died but it pains me to think about what he went through. He was around the same age as the kittens, so who knows what happened before we met him. It just breaks my heart... I know I should be happy that we gave him an enjoyable life until his death, and that he wasn’t out alone with no family, but the fact that it was so short makes my heart hurt. I’m starting to cry as I’m typing this...
Ugh, this is the worst. I’m sorry if this post is unnecessary, I just needed to write my thoughts down since if I didn’t I wouldn’t be able to cry as I am right now.