⚠️ Trigger Warning ⚠️
"Out On The Farm"
I had a friend that had a farm a good hour or two from the nearest decent sized town/city.. They lived on an old milk/dairy farm, but hadn't had livestock or farmed the land in a few decades.. There were a number of out buildings and barns.. with roughly +300 barn cats on the property... They couldn't afford to feed them all (who could these days?) properly or spay them.. so it wasn't uncommon to see cat's eating dead cats and whatnot.. OK, such is nature, fucked up but I can accept that I guess... Then one day, one god forsaken fucking day I was coming out of the porch and happened to see a perhaps 2 month old kitten frantically chewing on / eating something in the doorway:
I'm not proud of this, the way I reacted at that moment of horror... But the first time I saw that happening (it wasn't the only time I saw cats eating another cat on that property while it was still alive or in the process of dying) I IMMEDIATLY mercy killed the newborn kitten that had been getting its face eaten (it was still very much alive when I pulled the other one off it, in a puddle of blood trying about as much as a week old kitten can to get away from having its fucking face eaten while alive) and ended up shooting the other kitten with a 22LR rifle that was feasting on it's younger sibling..
You Ever Curb Stomp a Kitten? I Have
(and by the fucking god's I wish I'd never had to )This situation INSTANTLY felt horrible on all sides, and I don't mean slightly uncomfortable... I mean I'd literally just had to (quite) effectively flying 2 footed death curb stomp a newborn kitten with its face half eaten off.. as deep down I when I realized what the fuck was happening in front of me, I knew the kitten that had up until 5 seconds before that had been having its face eaten off for lord knows how long... less than 5 minutes atleast, cause I hadn't been outside that long before this, needed mercy killed to stop it's suffering... Still though.. I wish I could have been out there to see the 2 month old kitten steal the little newborn one from the box the other newborns were in.. I could have prevented it had I just went out for a cigarette a few minutes earlier.. Feels bad man.
I'm not even a cat person or anything.. but I'd never go out of my way to harm animals unless it was absolutely justified... and I think by this point on this property, it would have been justified loooong before this personal tipping point for me..
And that the one eating the little one, which I had picked up by then neck and was strangling up against the wall for about... 10 seconds or so, was literally starving to death, I'm ashamed that my knee jerk reaction had me strangling this poor starving kitten, but like, looking back on it now that was one of the maybe 2 or 3 times in my life I lost control and let pure anger take over... I snapped man.. I just fucking snapped. I didn't yell, I didn't scream, I didn't cry... I just came back into control about 10 seconds after death stomping the half face eaten newborn kitty and had this poor other suffering 2 month old kitten with it's eyes half bugged out (not as bad as the newborn kittens mind you, fml, cannot unsee) due to me choking the life out of it... fuck man. Like, what the actual fuck.
Just fucking atrocious situation all around.. After realizing that I was literally strangling this poor larger starving kitten to death, because it was starving and just trying to survive.. fuck man, I can't describe the helplessness, anger and sadness I felt.. hence deciding on shooting it point blank range in the head, less suffering.. but like.. fuck man.. still to this day that initial scene haunts me.
"Alright Dude, We Need to Fucking Talk"
Needless to say after that I sat buddy down and told him we NEEDED to deal with this situation, because I don't give a fuck how much you think you love your 300+ barn cats or how much his mother thinks that buying a bag of no name brand cat food a month for 300+ cats was taking care of them... they'd let it get to the point it was no longer feasible, safe, sane or humane to have that many cats around.. They were literally fucking eating eachother alive.
So we started actively hunting the males with rifles, disposing of newborn litters in the most humane way I could come up with.. and I'll tell you what... it never got easier taking garbage bags full of a dozen or more kittens at a time and drowning them in the marsh at the edge of his property... and then for the cherry on top of that, having to fucking beam any of the the kittens "lucky" enough to have escaped the bag that tried to swim for shore with rocks.. With the thought behind this seemingly horrific act hoping to knock them out so they would drown and not struggle and gurgle trying to stay afloat and survive, it was fucking heartbreaking...
Tried to put on a cool face and like, pretend to laugh about it and put on a face like this shit didn't phase me at all.. But it was entirely an act. I was a late 20's something at this point, a fully grown man.. and watching these little kittens drowning and having to literally take them out with rocks so they didn't struggle / have the last few moments of their life awareness be them gurgling and struggling, it just seemed more humane to fastball pitch a baseball sized rock into their head to knock them unconscious so they didn't suffer as they drowned.. I wanted to fucking cry while we did this... and it wasn't like we did this once.. we dropped atleast half a dozen or more bags of a dozen or so kittens at a time into that marsh.. And picked off the "lucky ones" with stones..
Fuck me man, there is nothing more heartbreaking than sitting there, already feeling like the biggest piece of shit in the world because you're literally drowning a bag full of kittens that did nothing wrong and didn't deserve it, to have a few pop up, screaming / meowing, gurgling, drowning and you have to sit there and watch it and hear it, my heart and soul frankly wasn't built to watch animals suffer.. I couldn't do it man, I picked up a rock large enough to basically for sure crack it's skull with a solid throw and render it/them unconscious for it's final moments..
It was all mercy killing, but that still doesn't make it feel any better, it's just the way it was justified. I'm not worried about going to hell because of this, because hell on earth and the entrance to it is having to watch kittens that didn't deserve the fate they met struggle, scream and slowly gurgle more and more while drowning in front of you... and the lesser evil in that situation being to smash it's head in with a thrown rock while it tries to swim legitimately for it's life. Because I was weak and I couldn't fucking take the sound and sight of these poor little fucks drowning like that in front of me.. Shit is hard man. Shit is really fucking hard.
I'll Never Forget That Summer...
All in all that summer and fall I'd ended up having to kill well over 150 cats and kittens myself, no idea what buddies kill count was.. Didn't care to ask, don't care to ever bring it up to him again..
This is/was/never will be anything I enjoy. I like hunting animals I can eat and feel no joy or satisfaction in killing creatures for sport.. But this wasn't for fucking sport.. This was mercy killing, plain and fucking simple, and to this day I still look back at the day that started it all with that kitten eating another kittens face in front of me and shudder.. I can still hear drowning kittens screaming sometimes when it's super quiet and I'm under high stress. Cannot unsee, cannot unhear, cannot undo. It's something I have to live with. And short of today's share of the story... something I've almost nearly always silently suffered with since that summer.
How anyone who claims they love their animals / cats let shit get like that is beyond me.. Not a knock at buddy and his family.. they are honest to god good people who helped me out a lot in life.. But the way they mismanaged their barn cat issue effectively meant I had to step up and do what none of them had the fucking balls to do.
Spay and neuter your pets people.. please for the love of god spay and neuter your pets..
If not for their sake and happiness, then to prevent poor fucks like me having to step up and effectively become a murderer of animals that frankly didn't deserve it, but also didn't deserve to starve to death or have their faces eaten off while alive.
TLDR
Feel free to call me a psychopath or a monster or a piece of shit or whatever makes you feel better, I'm a kitten killer, but never was it enjoyable or something I shrugged off or took lightly, the weight of such deeds is far greater than most people ever have to carry.. If this is what "doing gods work" feels like or entails then it may very well be harder to care enough to fix problems than it is to ignore it and neglect it till it goes away.. Perhaps the real evil is indifference or lack of action when issues like this are observed.. I don't know.. Maybe this is all cope and I'm a fucking kitten killing monster.. I don't know anymore.. It never felt right or has sat right with me that I as put in that situation.
Most people don't have it in them to "Old Yeller" animals suffering.. Probably for the best honestly.. Because at the end of the day unless you're a complete fucking psychopath or sociopath, there is a very real and lasting toll you pay in your soul for having to commit acts of murder like I did to things as innocent as kittens simply born on the wrong farmyard..
At the end of the day I'd never wholesale slaughter animals in the way I had on that god forsaken farm.. Nothing you can call me on here can make me feel worse than I will for the rest of my life having done what needed to be done.
On another farm you'd still be chasing yarn, but here your life's not fun..
Please Forgive Me, Little Kitties.
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