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By Root 333 0

and called and was becoming very scared that I would never see him again. When there he comes over the fence and starts meowing for dinner. I was so relieved. He lived in there with a stray cat that we caught in one of those humane cat traps. We kept seeing this black stray cat around the yard and he was eating all the birds, so we decided we needed to do something. We caught him and got him fixed and I decided to keep him, too. I named him Lucky. He turned out to be a very nice cat, too. Very good personality, loved to eat! He lived with Tucker for many, many years. They were like brothers. The day they died broke my heart. To this day, even writing this right now I feel the tears coming.

It all started the day before Halloween. I was in the office, working, when G came running in saying there were two big dogs in our backyard. I became concerned for the kids first of all and ran outside to see them for myself. As soon as I got out there, two big huskies went running back from where they had come from, which happened to be through a hole they had chewed from our neighbors’ yard to ours through two fences. I put up a piece of wood and thought that would take care of the problem; looking back, I wish so much I would have taken the time to do a better job of securing that fence, but hindsight is 20-20.

The next day, about midmorning, I was working in the office again, when in came the kids again saying the dogs were back. This time I wasn’t as panicky. They seemed harmless to me, and I was sure as soon as I went outside they would go back over the fence. So Phillip, Nancy, the girls, and I went out to the back and shooed them back over and were getting ready to make the hole more secure so it wouldn’t happen again. Everyone was out there helping me get the dogs back over and then I turned around and went to say “Hi” to my cats, Tucker and Lucky, but they didn’t move because they were dead. I felt such devastation I don’t think I moved for a long time. Phillip saw me, then looked at them and saw the huge hole the dogs had made in the enclosure which they were in. The kids were out there, too, and hadn’t seen them yet or even realized what had happened, they just saw me sobbing and on my knees. I just couldn’t help it. I was so devastated. Phillip stayed with me while Nancy took the girls inside, I’m not sure what she told them, but I stayed outside sobbing. Phillip went over to the neighbors to let them know what happened, and I soon heard them working on the fence. Surely, they could hear me cry, too; but I just wanted them to fix the fence so it didn’t happen again to any of our other cats. I cried all day that day and several days thereafter, especially during feeding time when I didn’t have to make as many dishes as I used to; those times were especially hard and sometimes I would have A finish. I stayed in bed a lot and slept; the first night I cried so hard during the day that I got a killer sinus headache that night and wasn’t able to sleep well. It took time to get over the loss of them, especially Tucker, who I will remember forever because I found him and he loved me.

In 2006, Nancy and I brought home two kittens on one of our thrift store outings for the girls. They were being given away in a box outside of the supermarket. We picked two out and brought them home. The girls named them Princess and Misty. Princess attached herself to my youngest daughter and would follow her around like a puppy. Misty was more of the laid-back type and spent many hours in my eldest daughter’s lap.

Tucker

Lucky

We also had two dogs that used to belong to our neighbor who had months earlier fallen in his house and was moved to an elderly care facility. Phillip brought his two dogs—Mindy, a pit bull/Labrador mix and Rowdy, a German shepherd/rottweiler ball of puppy energy. We soon learned that the two dogs loved to chase cats, and since we had so many on the property, we decided to build a dog run for them. I would take them out once a day for a walk on the leash around the backyard. Rowdy would always pull, so I didn