It is with a terribly sad and heavy heart that I must pass on this news. My mother's cat ( and mine as well, of course, seeing as how much time I spent around my parents' house) affectionately named 'Dude' passed away after suffering terribly from what the emergency vet believed was gangrenous wounds due to being trapped ( and somehow escaping from) an animal trap of some sort.
Dude was always an outdoor cat, never one to ever want to come indoors except during the colder months when he would sleep on a high shelf in my parents' garage on top of a pile of warm fleece shirts and old blankets. But once in a great while he'd come into the house and eat a little or play with toys before heading right back out into the yard and around the neighborhood. He was impossible to catch and while he allowed you to pet him once in a blue moon, he hated being picked up and never quite let you close enough without getting skittish. His brother on the other hand is more housebound and not such a tomcatter or a roamer. Dude wasn't fixed and never had his shots, and he paid dearly for that...again, too smart to get captured by a cage or to be entrapped by anything humans dared to try to make him more civilized.
He had nicked ears from fights and battlescars. He always did show up two or three times a day for feeding time and allowed only my mother to scratch him between his ears. We called him Dude because he just reminded us of a hippie, you know, look at that big lazy smile. And if he could talk, he'd most likely sound a lot like, well, something like " "Dude, where's my food?" ( to the movie, Dude, Where's My Car?) Or he definitely would sound like a stoner. We were tempted to name him Scooby because he was just like a cat a stoner would have. And I used to laugh and think, if that cat had a human hobby, he'd be smoking like Chris Tucker from FRIDAY nonstop.
Dude was cool. That was one reason why I really loved him. Well, he always survived his fights and his mishaps, but alas, a few days ago he disappeared and we were all worried about him as he ALWAYS came for his food and a place to sleep. Today my mother called me in shock, saying that he came dragging his back legs, which were bloody and torn, and obviously deeply infected, slowly dragging his way up the walkway to his usual resting place on the porch. Because of his weakened state, my mother was able to gently hold him in a towel and place him in a carrier. She called me and we rushed him over to the emergency vet. The vet was wonderful and he was very honest when he called us a few hours later to tell us that Dude's legs had been in some kind of animal trap ( it had to be a fairly large one, and people around here aren't supposed to have anything larger than a mousetrap) and that his legs were not only fractured, but gangrene had set in and the vast majority of the lower leg tissue was necrotic. That in itself, the vet said, would cost several thousand dollars to repair and even the possibility of amputation. It wasn't the cost that made us decide to do the humane thing, but the vet did blood work on Dude and Dude had feline HIV. Because he lacked vaccinations there was a very good chance he would succumb to a horrible death by feline AIDS. That and he would live his former life of freedom without legs.
Our decision was to put him to rest, peacefully, where he could run with the full use of his legs over the rainbow bridge, and where he could tomcat all he wanted to, and where the fields were always full of catnip and he could be the Badass Dude of the Neighborhood only in this feline heaven, he would never worry about poisons or traps or losing his limbs. My mother and I went into the room together with the vet as Dude lay there, breathing hard, on his favorite blanket, a brown one covered with paw prints. His infected legs were all shaven and he had blue bandages wrapped around them, and one of his front paws was also badly infected from a puncture wound probably from the trap or a nail of some sort. He looked at us. There he still had that ultracool, hippie-like stoner grin that I always associated him with. His eyes told us what we already needed to know. Give me peace, people, send me to the place where I can smoke weed and see all the rainbows I want to see.
And so it was. One injection and six seconds later, and Dude smiled his last at us, his grin never faltering. In my mind, he was dreaming of bongs and hanging with the other hippie cool cats over that Rainbow Bridge.
Damn, I can't stop crying. Dude, you were one cool cat. And you will be eternally cool, in that place where the catnip grows forever green, where your milk is always warm the way you liked it, and where bags of Temptation treats are around every corner. And where you will always have plenty of shelves with your favorite brown blankets to lie on, and no traps to hurt you. Spartacus and all our other kitties welcome you there.
You will be missed here, Dude. You were too damn cool for this earthly place anyways. You are loved.
Dude, by the way, will be cremated, and we chose a silver urn with paw prints on it. On it, the inscription will read
Forever Cool: Dude
2005-2012
In Memoriam: A devastating loss
Ava 
I am sure your cat will live on in your memories and that is what counts
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