While this story has a positive ending, it is not a happy story.
I truly do not know how to iterate how lucky our family got a few nights ago. I’ve heard these stories before, and I have never once heard them have the fortunate ending that we got. It still scares me to think about.
Monday morning, somewhere between 3 and 3:30am, my mother in law bursts into mine and AJ’s room, saying there was a coyote in the backyard. Our cats have a pet door to allow them into the backyard and the furthest they ever go is the next door neighbor yards (and even that is rare) so I have never been overly concerned. I flew out of bed, and I sleep next to the sliding glass doors to the backyard, threw the curtains open and saw the coyote in the back planter with Khaleesi’s neck in his jaws, dragging her to the wall where he was clearly planning to escape.
I screamed “he’s got her!” and I was running out the doors before I could think. And I know I wasn’t thinking because now that I look back on it, I have absolutely no idea what my plan was. Trying to tug-of-war Khaleesi from his bite would have been fatal for her, and I even if I wasn’t pregnant I don’t think I have any applicable life skills to confidently wrestle a coyote, but maybe it was me running out there so confidently that caused him to drop her. I don’t remember much other than I was running out there and suddenly he was gone and Khaleesi was left in the planter.
I picked her up and she was so bloody I honestly thought half of her face was missing at first. I just started crying and made AJ take her because I couldn’t bear to look at her like that. She was breathing and panting so rough and heavy, I thought she was dying, whether she had punctured lungs or throat or was choking on blood, it was impossible to tell. And her eyes were so big and glassy it seemed like the look of death to me. We threw on clothes and sped off to a 24-hour emergency vet that AJ knew about because once Anana ate an entire tray of weed brownies LOL.
By that afternoon, Khaleesi was home. No life-threatening injuries, no internal bleeding, just bruising and trauma to the face that needed natural healing. We have pain meds, warm cloths for her face, and lots and lots of love for her. And because all signs point to her being okay and a recovery, I feel okay posting this devastating photo of her after we brought her home from the vet (can you imagine what she looked like when we took her in?!)
I cannot stop thinking about how lucky we are. That my mother in law heard the noises and bothered to check it out at 3am, that she just got us JUST IN TIME for me to run out there JUST IN TIME before that POS coyote hopped the wall, that Khaleesi didn’t sustain life threatening injuries. She still has so much shock and trauma and will for sure have PTSD from this and honestly, so will I.
I am okay with cats being indoor/outdoor if the area and personality warrant it. I recognize cats that go outdoors will probably have a shorter lifespan than cats that are indoors-only. I just think cats are wild enough that their quality of life can be more important than their quantity of life. But I had always assumed that the outside force that might take her would be a car (which never even scared me enough anyway because she’s so skittish she doesn’t leave the yard) and to think that she was almost eaten alive is just more than I can bear and once again, I can’t believe how lucky we are that we were able to save her from that fate and I get more days to cuddle with her. Good thing we named her Khaleesi and not, I don’t know, Cinderella.
Suddenly the food chain seems excruciatingly more cruel than necessary.
I love you, my little Bug!
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