Davy, Part 2

I forgot to tell you yesterday that Davy loved everyone!!! Contrary to his disposition and behavior, he loved people. He would gladly run up to anyone walking along the street, which is how all the school children knew him and knew of his temper. He'd go visit the neighbors and walk right up to their doors. He was really very friendly until someone would attempt to pet him.

What I'm going to tell you today and tomorrow may distress you, or you might find extremely difficult to believe, and you may never want to return to the Forty Paws blog. But if you can't manage to read today's post and tomorrow's post, please at least come back on Thursday to see how it all ended. There was really some much needed legislation passed in the State of Texas in part because of Davy. So please, check out the wrap up on Thursday.

I won't go into extreme detail because I don't want this activity to begin anew, and much of it is too difficult to handle emotionally. I was changed forever by what happened.

In early August 2000, I went outside to wash litter boxes in the wee hours of the morning before it became too hot. It was an oppressive summer. I noticed a great deal of Davy fur in the driveway. Fur on the pavement, in the mulch of the flower beds lining the driveway, against the garage door. There was so much fur that I swept it up. I thought Davy had been in a heavy duty fight overnight. I knew he liked to sit at night on top of the rolling polycarts that the city uses for trash collection surveying the lay of his land, and figured that an evil intruder cat had come onto his property.

Well, Davy didn't come in during the heat of the day, and he didn't come in that night. Sometimes he would be gone for almost 24 hours, but he usually checked in to eat and get some companionship at least daily. By the next day I became worried when he hadn't appeared. I started walking the alleyways calling his name, fearing that he was locked in someone's garage or worse yet, their metal shed which would become an oven in the Texas August heat.

Daily I walked the alleys and called for him. I walked up and down the nearby streets and called his name. I made signs for "Missing Cat" with his description, etc. and hung these on lamp posts, utility polls, and placed them in vet offices and at the Animal Shelter. I visited the Animal Shelter several times over the next week, and had filed a missing cat report with them on the first day.

Nine days later, after my latest visit to the Animal Shelter, the supervisor called me at home and informed me that she was very sorry, but that Davy had been found mutilated. I couldn't believe it! I thought the mutilations had stopped in our city. She told me that they had never really stopped, they only slowed down periodically, and would then pick up again. And that Davy had been killed during an increase in activity. She thought the police had notified me because they had taken my information off his collar. She said that I could come and get his remains because he was back at the shelter after the necropsy had been completed by a local vet. She told me there wasn't much left of him. Only his head and 2 front legs and collar. He had been found by 2 young boys in the field behind our house. His head, 2 front legs and collar neatly laid out in a straight line.

I was fairly hysterical at this point and called my husband home so that we could go get Davy. When we walked into the shelter, the supervisor brought forth a small, square package from the freezer and handed it to me with such pain in her eyes. The package didn't even weigh 5 lbs.

We brought Davy home and buried him. Our cats immediately became indoor only. Bow fought this change the hardest. He had been indoor/outdoor for 10 years and it was hard to retrain him. But we persisted.

That weekend we installed motion detector floodlights in our driveway and on the front porch. My husband built the cat enclosure and moved Davy's cat flap from the front of the house to the back bedroom leading into the cage.

Tomorrow I will explain the actions I took to try and get this activity stopped and the research that required. Thursday I will explain how Davy played a part in changing Texas state laws.