It is perhaps the worst day I have ever had. It is most certainly, without a doubt, the worst sound you can hear. It’s not any sort of quiet thump that may occur when you run over the top of your cat. What I am talking about is the screeching howling cry that comes from a cat that is feeling his body smashed against the garage floor as a mini van crushes his tail and then his legs and back.
Let me just say, it was a bad day. It was bad for me but it was the worst for our Scrat. I know, it happens. People have been kind enough to remind me it happens quite frequently. It happens and usually cats die awful deaths. It happens and children see. But, honestly, it just doesn’t happen to me. And, as if this were not bad enough to have run over my Scrat, it happened when both my boys(ten and twelve years old) were in the car at the time.
After hearing the sound, I felt the adrenaline and anxiety twisting up together and surging in me as my boys both asked, “What was that, Mom?”
What do you say? How do you explain it? As they began to look around and ask about their cat the question finally came. “Mom, where’s Scrat? Did you just run over MY cat?”
This is when you begin to shrink. This is when the tears fly forward and you fight like crazy to hold them back so that they do not begin to fall down the front of your face and send your children into crying tail spins. This is the moment when you have to be Mom and be in control and in charge and be fearless. This is the moment when you have to be the grown up and act like everything is okay because if you don’t, and they are watching you, all hell will break loose in your world and you WILL lose control of more than just yourself.
I told my boys, “Just close your eyes and do NOT get out of the car,” because I did not know what I was going to find. I took a deep breath, opened my door and before I closed it behind me I reminded them once again to NOT look out. Luckily our impulse control is better these days and they love their Scrat very much. They held their breath too as they kept their eyes closed and we all hoped for the best.
As I stepped out of the minivan, I looked beneath my feet at the front driver’s side tire as well as the back driver’s side tire and found nothing and no one beneath them. I breathed a little as I gathered my courage to go to the other side. I began to walk to other side and, with a first step, I could see a gray streak leave the garage. He was not under a tire or dead. At least I knew that.
My ten year old, who was no longer closing his eyes, must have noticed the relief in my eyes because he asked, “Did you see him? Is he okay?”
I wasn’t sure how to answer yet so I said, “Just stay in the car, buddy.”
I walked out of the garage and around to the front door where I finally found him. I had not run over his head and there was no blood. This is important and good because I knew the boys would want to see him and, at least from what I could see, he looked good. As he began to walk, or try to, is when I noticed the damage. His tail and legs were not functioning well at all. As we pieced together the accident later with the vet, the best we can figure is that his tail was under the tire when I began to back out and as his tail got trapped, the tire began to roll up his body. When I put the car back into gear, we then rolled back off of his body and limited any further damage.
I gently picked him up from the front door and carried him in the house. I called our bet and even though I told them Scrat was traumatized and possibly paralyzed from the accident, they told me they were at lunch and would be back in an hour. Uggh. The boys and I had been on our way to pick up their sister so I put Scrat in his kennel and drove the ten minute drive to pick her up. It would give us all a moment to regain our senses and breathe again and the kennel, since Scrat was not bleeding, would keep her safe and immobilized until the vet got back from their lunch.
And, adding to the chaos was knowing my ex from out of state would be at my house in twenty minutes to pick up my children for the week and my high school friend and his daughter would be at our house in fifteen minutes to stay with us for the weekend.
When I pulled up to pick up my daughter, I very quietly told her what had happened but my quiet voice did not help keep her quiet at all. She uncharacteristically began to use a very high pitched voice to question me. After calming the car back down and taking her friend home, we waited for all our guests to arrive back at the house and for the vet to get back in the office.
Right on time, my childhood friend and his daughter arrived to stay with us and my ex was not too many minutes behind them. After my boys left, I began to make more calls to vets. It was surprising how little concern seemed to fill the vet offices when a cat is run over but still living. The first was going out to lunch and closing for an hour, the second told me they did not have the facilities for an animal that would need to be watched over night but the third, the emergency vet, said come on over. I apologized to my friend and his daughter. I felt bad to have them walk into such drama but I didn’t know what else to do. He, being the calm and unshakable guy he is (he is also the smartest boy I know and apparently his military pilot training paid off in spades because he was as calm and cool as anyone I have ever seen), just said he and his daughter would be happy to come along.
And, that is exactly what they did. Like the trooper he is turning out to be, he was not phased by tromping along with us to the vet or a cat that may or may need to be put down because of his injuries. I guess, as they say, this is when you find out who your friends are!
This has become a long post…running over your cat is like that…it takes time to explain. Tomorrow I will write about the vet, the tentative recovery of Scrat and what we chose to do. Sometimes it’s just not easy to figure out what the “right” thing to do is.
Thanks for reading and for caring about Scrat 🙂
wisdomfromthesisterhood 