Hombre

I still miss Hombre. He was such an interesting kitty who I only knew for a short time and who I still mourn. Hombre was one of our outside cats that we "inherited". For the longest time, we would catch occasional glimpses of him, but he never wanted us humans to bother him. Or so we thought. We named him Hombre because he was a big, rough and tough looking dude who always had scrapes and scratches from his daily and nightly activities in the wild. He would come around to eat and then saunter off after getting his fill. He was never sociable, and clearly never had had any human interaction. But I continued to talk to him while he visited our back steps to eat. He would look at me with the most soulful eyes, and then off he would go again. I would never be sure when the next would be that I'd see him again. He was always such a raggedy mess and continued to shy away from me. Until late last spring. He began to realize that I wasn't a monster, and he started hanging around a little longer and didn't run off as soon as I got close. He eventually let me lightly stroke his scraggly big head. And he grew fonder and fonder of my attention to him, to the point where I was picking him up and cleaning his scratches. He became such a lover, but he would always retreat back to the great unknown and come back looking his normal rough and tumble self. But he grew to depend on me, and I grew to love him more every day. Because he was such a wanderer, I never knew when I would see him next, especially with everyone's busy schedules. But I was finally able to schedule his vet visit as it coordinated with being able to catch him and put him in the garage kennel for a couple of days prior to the vet visit. My intention was to have him neutered and given his shots and any medications necessary for his constant scrapes and sores (the back of his left ear had a sore - presumably from a fight - that just would not heal). The first thing that our vet does is test each cat for feline leukemia. It's a fatal disease and is very contagious. It broke my heart to hear that he tested positive. It only made sense to euthanize him to avoid contaminating any of the other cats. I cried for two days afterward, and I still think about him months later. Just as he was taken from me, we had started to bond and I knew that he knew that he could rely on me. Which makes me feel like I betrayed him a little bit. Hopefully, in the end he knew he was loved.