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        General >> Off Topic Subjects >> Road Kill
        
(Message started by: jonnycab on Mar 13^th, 2008, 12:01am)

Title: Road Kill
Post by jonnycab on Mar 13^th, 2008, 12:01am

Driving down a street today I noticed a cat on the other side of the road thrashing around like some kind of dervish.....obviously it had just been run over :(.....

As I passed, it was obvious that it's skull had been crushed on impact because one eyeball was protuding wildly from it's socket to the point that it was almost hanging out :o

What do I do ?.....it's only a cat, so there's no point calling the police :-/

I pulled up (no-one else did, although the road was busy) & went over to the cat with the intent of picking it up & taking it to the nearest house......but the way the thing was trashing about, with claws at full length made me back off :o

It was obviously in full animalistic protection mode & would certainly have shredded the skin off my arms if I'd gone near it ???

What do you do in that circumstance ? :-/.......

If it were a dog or a deer, then at least it would have been docile....but cats never seem to want help when in distress.....they just go completely mental ???

Title: Re: Road Kill
Post by TiberiuS on Mar 13^th, 2008, 12:43am

Yeah mate, this happened to me a few months back.

Driving home late one night I saw something laying in the road. Stopped and walked over to it, beautiful grey cat lying in the middle of the road. It was twitching but didn't move, poor little b****r just looked at me. Went to move it out of the road but it died before I even got it onto the pavement, these things happen :(

I like my animals and it did sadden me a bit, we'd only just lost a cat ourself.

About 3 weeks later had one run out on me from between 2 parked cars. Only doing 25, slammed on the anchors but it still ran under, I know I hit it but it vanished without a trace, couldn't see anyhting in the dark ???. Cats have no road sense whatsoever, at least with ours we're not on a main road and they don't seem to stray far.

The carnage you see on the roads is depressing, poor little squashed things everywhere..

The cheerful things we talk about on here, eh :-/

Regards, Bruce :)

Title: Re: Road Kill
Post by peteHull on Mar 13^th, 2008, 6:45am

You old softies, ;D

I know it's sad isn't it, I once found a rabbit with no lower back legs, i stopped the car about 100 yds away cos we had the bairns in the car.... this little rabbit was just sat in the road and as I aproached it looked me in the eye as much as to say, "I aint goin to run mista 'cos me legs are playin up"..... :'(
What do you do? I had NEVER been in this position before, there were absolutely no civilisation anywhere to be seen yet this poor little bunny needed MY help.

I had seen people catching and killing rabbits on telly before, they seemed to just hold the back legs and pull the ears until the neck broke,.... (Hold the back legs?) .... ??? there weren't any.... What should I do? ??? >:( :-/
I thought to myself If I hadn't been here the poor little thing would have probably just died or would have been run over again, I don't know, I looked to the car, the Bairns were looking out of the window expecting me to bring the bunny back to meet them, Boy! was I in a dilemma, I had to resolve the matter once and for all for the little creatures sake as well as my own.... I lifted the bunny into the hedge and I painstakingly stamped on its head, it was the only thing I could think of... It did the trick however, and the little thing just laid and twitched a few times, then became still.

And I call you two Old Softies.... ::)

I really felt bad about that for a long while and I often think about it when I see roadkill nowadays.... :-X

Pete

Addition.... I told the bairns that he'd escaped and run of into the field.....

Title: Re: Road Kill
Post by tintin on Mar 13^th, 2008, 2:54pm

when i was in portugal, i was driving along in a hire car, with three girls. i noticed everyone swerving up ahead, as i approached i saw a cat, with its back end completely flattened on the tarmac, but front end alive and well. it was clearly in pain, and not going to survive

i ran over it, putting it out of its misery, but i didnt make any friends out of the girls, they were mortified. they have "forgiven" me now though....

Title: Re: Road Kill
Post by taliban aka Cheekyboy2 on Mar 13^th, 2008, 10:05pm

jonny, if its an animal in severe pain it doesnt matter if its a cat, dog, whatever, its liable to go 'mad'. it could be that it has nerve damage and has no control.
'its only a cat so dont call the police! JONNY >:( >:( >:( >:(
if you dont have a number for the RSPCA or you're not able to take the animal to a vet etc, then just phone the police, they'll either give you the RSPCA number (if they're busy, lazy etc) or phone them for you, if they have a patrol nearby they'll normally attend and make the call...

Title: Re: Road Kill
Post by gozz on Mar 13^th, 2008, 11:21pm

TiberiuS
Have you had a look under your bonnet ? I ran over a cat once,and that's where it ended up.How they do it is beyond my comprehension.
GOZZ.

Title: Re: Road Kill
Post by jonnycab on Mar 14^th, 2008, 11:26am

'its only a cat so dont call the police! JONNY

What I mean't was that the police wouldn't be interested. I thought they only reacted to calls about dogs, deer, cattle etc.... :-/

I didn't have the RSPCAs number or the number of the local nick & if I'd rung 999 then it's likely that I'd be accused of using an emergency number for a non emergency.

As for the reaction of animals in pain....I've seen plenty of injured cats, that even when the are sitting quietly on the verge will still hiss & spit at you if you go near them.

Dogs & deer don't tend to react in this way...I've never been first on the scene when I've seen an injured dog or deer, but they certainly don't seem to react like cats when in pain....they do tend to be alot more docile & let people try to comfort them :)

I'm only talking from personal experience though :)

Title: Re: Road Kill
Post by mr._floppy on Mar 14^th, 2008, 11:56am

I'm glad this subject has come up. I have a confession.

I ran over a cat the other week ( my first ever ) , just darted right out, no time to lift off the gas let alone hit the brakes. It rumbled along under the car and I'm thoroughly ashamed to say I didn't even go back and see if it was alive or dead.

It was only a 200 yds from my house and was probably a neighbour's well loved moggie. It was gone the next morning, either it's owner found it or it crawled away too die.

I still feel bad about it coz I remember our old puss getting run over years ago and the grief, tears and lamentation it caused to our family.

I know it's only a silly Cat, but................. :-[

Title: Re: Road Kill
Post by chrali on Mar 14^th, 2008, 12:38pm

Many years ago I was driving down a street in Chiswick and a squirrel jumped from one tree across to another on the other side of the road, the the little critter took fright and ran back across the road, where I had no time whatsoever to stop. I felt my wheel bump over him, but absolute coward I was I pulled up a little further on and looked in my rear view mirror to see a leg waving in the air. I waiting (delayed?) until the record finished, hoping that he'd died of shock. I ambled up the road with an 'oh whats over there' style. The poor squirrels head was compressed with his eyes out and all. I felt so guilty about dad squirrel tring to get back to mum and baby squirrels who are going hungry that I wrote a cheque to the RSPC. Took me weeks not to feel guilty, but I was glad he died. I not sure I could have done the deed even to put him out of pain. :(

Title: Re: Road Kill
Post by jonnycab on Mar 14^th, 2008, 2:20pm

It seems that trying to be humane & putting a badly injured animal out of it's misery is not always the best course of action......

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/04/09/ncat09.xml

If the copper had just let it suffer an agonisingly slow death, then he may have also been up on the same charge ???.....

.....d**ned if you do & d**ned if you don't ::)

Title: Re: Road Kill
Post by peteHull on Mar 14^th, 2008, 3:28pm

on 03/14/08 at 14:20:00, jonnycab wrote:

It seems that trying to be humane & putting a badly injured animal out of it's misery is not always the best course of action......

Likley they'll have to open a few more "charity shops" to pay for the court case.....

Quote:

A policeman who put an injured cat out of its misery after it had been run over was dragged through the courts by the RSPCA in a case that has cost £50,000.

Title: Re: Road Kill
Post by TiberiuS on Mar 15^th, 2008, 1:38am

on 03/13/08 at 23:21:20, gozz wrote:

TiberiuS
Have you had a look under your bonnet ? I ran over a cat once,and that's where it ended up.How they do it is beyond my comprehension.
GOZZ.

No it didn't end up in there ;)

Thing is, I saw it in the headlamps about to run in front of me like has happened a dozen times before, if it had run out regardless like they normally do I would have missed it. But no, it hesitated for a second and went straight under, I felt a bump so definitely hit it...2 ton car vs. cat, not pretty. No sign of it in the road and it was dark so I left but I doubt it got far :-/.

I felt guilty because I know it must have been badly injured and of course it was somebody's pet. I'm not stupid with animals but we've always had them as a family and I was really gutted when we lost one of our cats to cancer a couple of months before.

Just one of those things, these things happen :-/

Bloody cheerful stuff, eh guys? :)

Regards, Bruce.

Title: Re: Road Kill
Post by taliban aka Cheekyboy2 on Mar 15^th, 2008, 2:20am

mr floppy, it is NEVER only a silly cat >:(

as for the case of the copper, well, it was only his words suggesting its back end was squashed (as you would expect when you're defending yourself).
what did he really expect to happen, a passer by see's a copper bashing the s**t out of an animal with a spade? lucky it wasnt me passing by.....i'd be inside now for murdering a copper.

Title: Re: Road Kill
Post by mr._floppy on Mar 15^th, 2008, 11:16am

<<<mr floppy, it is NEVER only a silly cat >>>

What I meant when I said " it's only a silly cat " was, I was quoting the flippant comment other people say when they see a dead cat on the road .

Title: Re: Road Kill
Post by peteHull on Mar 15^th, 2008, 11:29am

Many years ago it used to be that running over a cat didn't need to be reported to the police while a licence was required to own a dog, cats are considered not to have an owner because they will come and go at thier leisure. "Cats have no boundries" The old saying "you never Own a cat, it chooses to be with you" I have a friend who's cat disapeared for days at a time, it went on for years, One day he was talking to a neighbour in the street, he saw the cat and said, "there's our cat" to which the neighbour replied "what do you mean, that's our cat".... ??? it turned out that the cat actually lived at both houses.... ;D

They are also not daft, they like the best of both worlds...

pete

Title: Re: Road Kill
Post by taliban aka Cheekyboy2 on Mar 15^th, 2008, 12:50pm

ah, see what you mean flop.

thats quite true pete, cats often choose 'their' pets.

about a year ago a mate at work said he'd had little sleep cos he woke up in the night due to the cat on his bed, i said whats the problem, his reply was he doesnt like cats let alone have one!
he now realises that he does like cats and his young daughter has named him biscuit. however, the cat came with a collar, his daughter didnt like it so they changed it, a day later cat comes in with another collar so they change it again.
it turns out the cat actually belongs to someone opposite although it spends most of its time with my mate but it also 'visits' someone down the street...

Title: Re: Road Kill
Post by mr._floppy on Mar 16^th, 2008, 1:17pm

Yeah, cats, unlike Dogs, aren't renowned for their loyalty.

They're aloof, selfish and not very demonstrative, which, I suppose, is why I like them.

Says more about me, I think :o

Title: Re: Road Kill
Post by sector-9 on Apr 1^st, 2008, 12:12am

Evil creatures if you ask me - our cat has nowt to do with me unless I'm opening a tin of cat food in which case she's purring and wrapping herself around my ankles. Bloody hypocrites! >:(

Darren

Title: Re: Road Kill
Post by big_neil on Apr 1^st, 2008, 8:23am

sorry about this tali but i know you like you,r moggies,
i do a huge garden for a lady two and a half days a week and she has two cats, in the summer bird nesting season there is not a birds nest complete within at least a mile of the house due to cats,every morning there is dead birds laying all over her garden, most of them with there heads bitten off, some are brought in the house as a token so to speak,when i do my nest box reporting to the rspb at the start of summer they say that woodpeckers are more of a problem to young fledglings than cats, size of bird doesn,t seem to make any difference from goldcrests to pheasants and even seagulls, sometimes there is young rabbits brought into the house by them to play with before the eventual kill,my dad was a pigeon racing man and i,ll never forget the look on his face after a cat had got in his loft , the resulting carnage was awful , consequently our garden when i was younger was buried with dead cats as he shot every one that came any where near.cats in general are , i suppose good but it,s the hunt and kill nature that,s inborn in them that,s not . according to the rspb the domestic cat is responsible for miilions of dead birds every year and my employer or even me doesn,t help by putting up bird tables and nestboxes then letting the cats out to do ther worst,
sorry to say this but,s that,s how it is i,m afraid.

Title: Re: Road Kill
Post by taliban aka Cheekyboy2 on Apr 1^st, 2008, 10:26pm

neil i love all animals, if i didnt live alone etc i'd have dogs too, deffo an 'iggy' and probably a lab.

was probably a fox that got into your dads loft (foxes are only just slightly less agile than a cat), that kind of carnage is akin to the fox, not their fault, all that captive prey sends them into a frenzy.
cats obviously kill lots of birds, they are afterall hunters (amazingly good ones at that, even their saliva is poisonous to birds), but its very difficult to survey; some years ago the rspb used a survey that was quite flawed; it was carried out in a country village where the cats each have a territory of nearly a square mile with lots and lots of prey, all the cats were keen hunters out all hours. the results were then multiplied by the estimated amount of cats in the uk. the problem is most cats are townies with small territories, a lot of which do little hunting. one of mine, Jessie, has never been a hunter, in 12 years has brought in one mouse whereas Alfie used to bring in at least 4 mice a week, plus the odd rat, but birdwise just a couple of blacbirds, a thrush, and 2 big fat juicy wood pidgeons in 11 years....

Title: Re: Road Kill
Post by big_neil on Apr 2^nd, 2008, 8:02pm

twas definately a cat tali as it was still in when dad caught it (it couldn,t do it again)
here,s one for you to laugh at, that lady where i do the garden got two cat bells for the cats to attach on their collars so the birds could hear them coming , the older one "toffee" is getting on and it doesn,t bother her with a bell on her neck but the younger one "tigga"was spotted the other day creeping up to a wood pigeon on three legs and holding on to the bell with the other to stop it ringing!

Title: Re: Road Kill
Post by peteHull on Apr 2^nd, 2008, 10:36pm

on 04/02/08 at 20:02:15, big_neil wrote:

.....other day creeping up to a wood pigeon on three legs and holding on to the bell with the other to stop it ringing!

Come on Niel.... it's the 2nd today.... ;D ;D

pete