Karma

Sometimes I think I have bad pet karma. Perhaps in a previous life I was attacked by some henious beast and now subconsciously wish ill upon domestic animals. In college a dog chased me across a busy street (unleashed) and was struck by a car. It sucked. I don't mean to trivialize what happened because I feel awful...really awful. So awful, I can't even look my neighbors in the eye and need to make an attempt to apologize - again. Of course, you're thinking that I hit their cat or dog with my car, but that wasn't it. A friend owns a Siberian husky and it came to my house Saturday. The dog was feeling a little couped up in my tiny apartment and when the screen door was opened, he pushed passed me and darted after the cat. The neighbor's cat. The ran around the back unit, then under my tiny porch and through the hole that leads under the house. The whole time my friend and I were yelling at the dog - obviously to no avail. When I finally spotted him again, I noticed a pair of eyes hanging from what appeared to be his jowls. I became immediately terrified. "Please don't let that be the cat, dear god." God did not hear my pleas and after my friend crawled under the house, we retreived a very deceased cat. My neighbor's cat. Oh god. Dear god. The dog killed my neighbor's cat. Jeezus. When we told her, I wanted to curl up in ball and hide.

I am not a pet owner, but I like animals. I pet the cats that come around my porch and play with them. We had rabbits when I was little. The neighbors' cats killed my rabbits a lot. I don't know if I cried. I was five. Probably. Later we had cats, but they stayed outside. Some of them got hit by cars and died. We had a dog too. She was outside in the backyard mostly. She got attacked once by a raccoon and my parents nursed her back to health. My good friend in San Francisco owns two cats. One of his cats feel from a four story window and survived. I am trying to remind myself that things happen to pets. I think this is pretty awful though. Maybe I shouldn't touch the pets anymore. Karma.