DoDo went home

After I posted the last post, DoDo's owner called me back. I posted about finding DoDo on Threads and it got a lot of reactions. Rather than typing more, I'll c/p that post:

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When I answered her call, she had an accent and I had a hard time understanding her, but I think she thought DoDo was still alive. I had to awkwardly break it to her that DoDo was no longer with us, that he had passed on. It took a sec, but she finally understood.

She was understandably upset and I told her I could bring the collar to her, mail it, or she could come get it. Whether or not it helped, I said if it was my pet, though either answer is terrible (knowing or not knowing), I would want to know.

She said she'd pick it up and I agreed to text my address to her.

Today, she texted again and said she'd like to pick up any remains, if I had them. I did have them, they were double wrapped in plastic bags and placed in a closed garbage can for the day. When I got home, I put the remains in a small box and awaited her husband's arrival.

Before long, Bob arrived and I greeted him with the box. I told him how I came about it and tried to gently and tactfully say what I found and how it was not the entirety of DoDo. He asked how much of DoDo was left and I told him.

He said DoDo was his in-laws' cat, but he had been his wife's grow-up-with cat. He said DoDo was 11 years old and had stayed at home after he and his wife married. They didn't know DoDo had gotten out of the house. He was an indoor cat but the in-laws had some friends staying over and somehow, he got out without anyone realizing. Apparently his house is about a mile south, as the crow flies. How DoDo ended up here is anyone's guess.

Bob did ask to see the backyard where I found him. He wanted to pick up the extra fur that was around DoDo's final resting spots. He took some pictures as well.

It turns out that Bob is Chinese, so I busted out my Mandarin to talk to him, though, admittedly, I only understood about 75% of his replies. Enough to get the gist, I suppose.

He did shed a tear and was grateful for my reaching out and assisting with a difficult situation. I'm glad to provide what little closure I could, giving them information to process the loss of their cat.

RIP DODO

Marci left for CO today. I got home and started dinner (reheating leftovers). I noticed a bunch of crows in the backyard, figured they were looking for bugs in the grass (weeds) or something. After eating and feeding Kodo, it was time to take him up.

We got to the top of the hill and right there was the rear leg of a cat. It was small, pink pads, rear leg all the way up to its haunch. Flies and bees on it, I had Koder give it a wide berth.

Further into the grass (weeds), there was a puff of fur and what looked to be a black tuft of tail. I walked towards the chain link fence and saw a little pink collar, no tag. And then just past that was a front leg, just torn cleanly off.

Right about then I remembered Marci texted me when she landed to say that the neighbor's wife had texted that she saw a coyote heading towards our yard. Pretty sure that's what happened back there.

I walked around some more and didn't see anything else. Kodo relieved himself on the other side of the yard and that was that. I brought Kodo down and then washed up. Did some research on how to dispose of 1/3rd of a cat. Basically I have to bag it and garbage it. I suppose I could take it to a vet, but not interested in transporting cat parts.

I put on some gloves, grabbed some garbage bags and went back up. I went back to the collar and checked it out and it actually had a name and number on it. The name was DoDo and the number I called. No answer, but I left a message and it was as awkward as I thought it would be. I said I found DoDo's collar and told them to call me back.

Then I grabbed the big leg in a bag, grabbed the tail tuft and grabbed the front leg, double-bagged, then put it in the garbage out back. Sadly, the garbage was picked up today, so the bits will sit there until next week.

RIP DoDo.

*images of fairly tame cat parts coming up*