My cousin and I are both renting a house together, and she has a dog (pit/lab mix) and I have a dog (Golden/lab mix) and three cats.
We leave a room open upstairs that we call the cat room that is gated off from the dogs so they always have a space to relax and escape to. My dog grew up around my cats since he was a puppy, and has never shown aggression towards them and the cats have always shown affection towards him. They openly hang out with each other with no problems, and I’ve always been able to trust the four of them together.
I started renting this house in July, and she moved in back in October. Her dog is very excitable and loves to chase small animals, but he has never shown aggression towards any animal or human. When he moved in the cats stopped hanging out around the house and would only stay in their cat room. If a cat comes out he immediately chases them, and even if he managed to catch up to one, he just stares at it with his tail wagging until the cat slinks away. I never in a million years thought that he would kill one of them.
A couple nights ago I went out to dinner, and my cousin got home from work and she calls me crying saying that she found one of my cats unmoving on the floor. She tried doing CPR but it was too late. All this time I’m thinking it must have been a freak accident, maybe she had heart failure and just dropped dead (she was only 3). But when I got home and saw her, her neck was covered in saliva and she had a gash where her fur was matted with blood.
One of her claws was broken and ripped, and her other nails had the fabric of their cat tree stuck in them. I went upstairs and saw the gate was busted through, and the bottom of the cat tree was bent. Her dog always had a habit of slamming up to the gate trying to chase them inside, and if he was in the cat room (if the gate was open while I was cleaning the litter box) he would jump up to it. I immediately know what happened, and he must have chased her to the room and managed to get through the gate and she was trying to hide in one of the cubbies on the tree but he pulled her out by the neck while she was desperately trying to hold on.
I was shocked. I’m grieving. I don’t know what to do or how to handle this. I feel so much guilt and pain and I feel like everything is my fault. She must have been so scared, it must have hurt so bad. And I wasn’t there to save her, I wasn’t there to protect her. I miss her so much and I can’t believe that she’s gone.
But I never once blamed my cousin, and I never once blamed her dog. I know he was acting on instinct, and I know he didn’t do it out of malicious intent. We both never thought it would come to this, or that he would ever hurt a fly.
I don’t know how to help my cousin, she’s blaming herself and doesn’t know how to handle it mentally. I’m sorry this is so long, but if anyone has any advice on how to handle this it would be greatly appreciated. I just want to help her, and I don’t know what steps to take. I’m very worried about her, and I’ve reassured her that I love her more than anything, no matter what. Her dog is everything to her, and there’s no way that I’d request for him to be put down.
TLDR; cousin’s dog killed my cat, I don’t blame either of them but she’s extremely distraught. How do I help her?
Submitted January 04, 2019 at 03:38AM by white_plum http://bit.ly/2TqjvSp
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