Cats and Dogs

I had probably one of my worst nights last night.
My cat of 10 years, CISCO, is used to a short "constitutional" outdoors after dinner most evenings. As the night starts earlier and it gets colder, that time outdoors gets very short.

Last night I let him out about 6:30. It was supposed to be a cold night here in Tucson so I went outdoors after about 10 minutes to call him back in - if he wasn't already waiting at the door.

As I'm heading to the front door I hear an ungodly ruckus and huge barking. It sounded like a war outside my door. I open it to see two HUGE blonde dogs attacking my cat. ON MY FRONT STEP! These dogs had Cisco down and both were at his throat. They were maybe 2 feet away. I was petrified! One dog looked up at me and then returned to Cisco's throat. I started screaming! Fortunately my noise must have scared them, so rather than attacking me with their charged up adrenelin, they ran off down the alley. Cisco tore off across the yard the other way.

I knew who the dogs were, I was pretty sure. I hadn't heard them barking as they usually do two houses down, but they have been loose before and are unique in our neighborhood. I immediately started calling and whistling for Cisco, but I knew that since he is such a mellow cat and avoids noise, cars and any commotion that it would probably be some time before he returned - IF he could return. IF he wasn't dying, IF he didn't bleed to death or freeze, or ... I was in a panic to find him.

It was cold. My neighbor happened to come out of her house just as I started calling and she immediatly put off her grocery-store trip to help me. We called and searched for Cisco for almost three hours. We ran into a neighbor on the next block who saw two blonde big dogs twice earlier in the day. She said she'd recognize them again and believed they lived up near us. We called and searched, freezing our butts off.

Finally I had to go in and warm up. I'd left my door open in case Cisco returned when I was out of sight, but no such luck. My house, of course, was also freezing by then. My next door neighbor on the other side came home and said he thought we should check HIS back yard which is fenced with wood. As my neighbors went around back to do that I came back outdoors to join them. As they came back up the alley, one's flashlight happened to go across the street into a bush & cactus that I'd searched before, but we saw the reflective eyes of a cat!!!!

I went up to Cisco who was laying there patiently, but he did not get up. He let me get next to him and after a minute, complaining, he let me pick him up. I first felt puncture marks around his neck. As I talked softly to Cisco, my neighbor grabbed my keys and pulled my car out and we rushed to a nearby emergency vet office. In the car I noticed a cut on his mouth and that his mouth didn't look "right".

The kind people at the pet hospital took x-rays and determined that Cisco was very lucking indeed for such a brutal attack. His central jaw bone was broken. He had to have surgury and his jaw had to be wired. It will have to be that way for 4 months.

The good news is that there was no internal organ damage, no other bones broken, the punctures only deep enough to form air pockets but not bleed much or pierce the body. We were lucky that I was there to see the attack and stop it almost immediately. Another minute or two and I'm sure that Cisco would have been crushed dead.

He's still in the hospital right now, and they want to keep him another night as they still can't interest him in trying to eat and they want to know he'll eat before they release him. I can't tell you how many gallons of tears we've spilled for this charming, well-loved little guy.

I also hate to tell you how the dog-owning neighbors are trying to pretend it wasn't their dogs. After asking me several times if I saw the dogs who attacked (yes indeed) and if I could recognize them (oh yes) they left their house with no dogs in sight - indoors or out. A little later they returned and all of a sudden their two blonde dogs (boxer?) were in the front yard barking their heads off at me across the street where I'd been hunting under a bush.

As I crossed the street the woman asked me again if I recognized her dogs -"where they THESE dogs?", as the ones who attacked Cisco and I said I sure think SO! She said (finally!), "Oh, it couldn't have been OUR dogs as we never let them out." Right. and accidents never happen. (And I don't have stage 4 cancer).

A bit later the dogs disappeared entirely and didn't come back until late this morning. It appears that the neighbors are going to deny responsibility. How sad is that? Unfortunately for them, the lady had asked me to look at them again to see if I recognized them. By the next week or so I might not have been absloutely positive, but thanks to her showing me the dogs in the evening light, I could see the same one looking at me the same way it had looked at me before. Nuff said.

It's 5pm. At 6pm I can go "visit" Cisco in the hospital. Please say a prayer for his fast recovery. I need my cat to help me with this cancer. He's the only one that makes home, "home".