Cats and Dogs and Zelda the Coyote

My daughter Jane and I started our day with a cat funeral. Her cat Jenny died last evening after a long illness. My daughter can't stand to let her pets go without a her best effort to keep them alive, and she did her very best to save Jenny, including medication, putting diapers on her, and bathing her often to keep her clean.

Jenny was one of four kittens my husband Scotty rescued from outside the door of a heartless woman back in 1999. A little tiger-cat mother had been driven out of a public laundry just hours after giving birth, and took her four kittens one by one to the woman's door, but the woman wouldn't help her. Scotty came home to tell me about the little cat family, and we went back with a cat carrier and brought them all home to a pen we had just for cats that needed temporary care.

We named the mother cat Missy, and the kittens - three gray tiger-kittens and one black tuxedo cat -  George, Jenny, and  Billy. I can't remember what we named the other little tiger female. The coyotes got her before the year was out when I couldn't catch her one night to keep her safe in my trailer. George lived about three years before the coyotes got him, and Jenny died yesterday. Now all that's left is Billy, who is outside right now eating some kind of rodent he just caught. He is a big cat. Missy is also alive and well. She left me when she got sick and tired of caring for big kittens, and got a job at the hardware and feed store. It is a large old wooden warehouse left from WWII and is kept busy keeping the rodent population down. She is much loved abd petted by customers and Joanne, who owns the store.

My daughter and I have a pet cemetery here at the horse camp where I live, so we buried Jenny next to some of our former pet cats, Minnie, Freddy and Chatterbox. We dug a grave under one side of a big live oak tree that grows over on a hillside where I can see it when I glance out my picture window. We also have dogs buried under the other side of the oak tree. The gracefully drooping branches spread shade over a large area, and my dogs, Smokey Joe and Sherpa, visit every day as if they know they have old friends buried there.

The story of the dogs buried in our pet cemetery is almost too sad to tell. My daughter rescued an abandoned and badly injured mother pit bull and her four mixed breed pups two years ago. I wrote a series of cheerful articles about Sheba and her pups. My daughter also rescued a lovely older black shepherd-type dog whose fur was so long it formed into dreadlocks, so we named her Whoopie. She was very shy but it was obvious she loved my daughter, and my daughter loved her back - very much. If she could have had only one dog, she would have chosen Whoopie.

I won't go into the gory details, but one day a few months ago the pit bulls got loose and killed Whoopie. She lived just long enough for us to rush her to town and the vet to see her, but essentially she bled to death from a terrible wound to her throat. After all the expense, the love and care, the attempts at training, and much verbal defense of those four dogs, my daughter felt betrayed. She vowed they would not live another day. They had murdered Whoopie and it would be capital punishment for all four dogs. We knew we could never trust the dogs again, and another time it might be a human being they attacked - especially a child.

We drove the 65 miles back home, loaded the dogs into the enclosed back of the truck, and took them back into town to the pound. The method of euthanasia at the pound here is the same as at the vet. They tranquilize the animals, and follow it with a lethal shot. We stayed with them to the end. I think the African American man who gave the shots felt almost as bad as we did. He had tears in his eyes, and gave me a comforting pat on the shoulder, which brought on more tears. We brought the dog's bodies back here, and buried them under the oak tree in our pet cemetery.

Now my daughter is left with her original two dogs, Trilby , a very old arthritic Staffordshire Terrier, and Rudy, a little, long-haired white dog of uncertain heritage who always has one ear up and one ear down. One eye and ear are black, but all the rest of him is white. He is old and almost blind with cataracts. We are always afraid he will try to kill a rattlesnake as he used to do with great skill. My daughter doesn't let him run free any more, except on special occasions.

Oh yes - I also want to tell you about Zelda the coyote. I may have mentioned her before in other articles. She showed up some time after the bad fires that came within 15 miles of us. She was tamer than a normal coyote, and she begged for food. No matter how many of my cats have been eaten by coyotes, that is just their nature, and I'm a forgiving soul. So I started feeding her. She got so tame she would run circles around me at about 30 feet of more away as I took her food to the special place we had chosen for her to eat.

When my daughter moved away five months ago, I never saw or heard Zelda again until two evenings ago. All my cats and one dog were safe inside for the night, but the cats looked scared. When I got up to see what the commotion was about, there was Zelda outside my picture window. She is so light colored she blended in with the color of the dry grass, and she stood so still, it took me a while before I could really see how close she was. Smokey was still outside and took he off after her. It made me laugh to see how she kept standing there looking at me until he was about 20 feet from her before she loped away. Smokey is so fat and slow, Zelda knows she can outrun him without any effort.

Later when Smokey came back inside very pleased with himself, I got to thinking about how much that little coyote trusts me. I couldn't help but feel that when she was staring at me, she was telling me 'she wouldn't hurt my cats'. "Trust me", her eyes said. So I got some dogfood and my cane and trudged up the hill to a new and better place for her to eat. I couldn't see her at first so I called "Zeldaaaah" in a high voice a few times, and she came trotting into sight and slipped through the sagebrush toward me. When I put down the food and moved back about 30 feet, she came right up and ate with gusto.

Two evenings later, as I have been writing this shortly after sundown, there have been three of my cats looking out the window behind this computer. All of a sudden they crouched down, and one growled. I looked out and there was Zelda, about 20 feet away, looking right into my window. I waved, and rustled up some dog food, trudged back up that hill and fed her. She sure has me trained!

Ever since the first day that she reappeared, I've been keeping my cats inside longer in the morning, or shutting them up in a cat kennel in my yard. When some of my cats are loose, I make sure it's when I'm at home and alert, and Smokey and Sherpa are outside guarding the perimiter. Somehow I don't trust Zelda, the pretty little coyote with the eyes that may be lying.