RIP Tom

Early this morning we made a horrible discovery, the last thing anyone would ever want to wake up to. Our sweet old man, our family mascot, the greeter on our front porch, our Tom Kitty was found gutted in our front yard.

As Holly, the first one to find him, looked around in disbelief wondering how in the world this had happened, she saw something very close to his body. It was a blue dog collar with tags. The perpetrator ("Sadie" - such a sweet sounding name for a killer) left behind a major clue, her name and phone number. Our feeble, sweet, old Tom had enough fight in him to rip the attackers collar off of her. I love, love, love the fact that he was able to do this, like his last little gift to the family that loved him so much.

After we finished freaking out and wrapped his body in a towel, I called the police who notified our county animal control officers once they started work for the day. We wanted some sort of justice for Tom. We wanted the owner of Sadie to know what she is capable of. If Sadie had ever done anything like this before, we wanted this to go on record and possibly take it to the next level.

While we waited for animal control and after we dug Tom's grave, I decided to call the owner myself. An old lady answered the phone. I had obviously woken her up. I told her what had happened, and she told me that Sadie was her grandson's dog and they were visiting from NC, as they commonly do. She said that Sadie always slept inside and she was not aware that she had been out roaming. She apologized numerous times before we hung up.

Once animal control arrived, took pictures of the blood stains in the yard as well Tom's body, I gave him Sadie's collar so he could find out where she lived and pay them a visit, which he did. As it turns out, Sadie is a graying 10 year old Boxer mix, not the large beast we had imagined. He said that he examined her, and her face, especially one of her eyes, is scratched up from our Tom trying to protect himself. He said she was an incredibly sweet, friendly dog and that she had never been known to do anything like this before. He also said that the guy who owned her was visiting his grandparents and that the grandfather (who is currently suffering from cancer)had accidentally left the gate open. The owner of Sadie received a citation from the animal control officer. Most of all, the officer told us that they were so sad for our loss and wanted to call us to apologize again. It helped, at least a little bit, to know that. Accountability counts for something, even if it does not bring our Tom back.

The kids and Holly and I buried our old Tom in the center of three evergreen trees, in a ray of morning sunshine in our front yard, right where he belongs, still symbolically greeting our guests and becoming one with the land that he considered his own.