Journal #8

An emotional situation that my family and I went through happened this past summer. It had to do with my cat, Mulligan. Mulligan was our kitty that we had since he was nine months old. My sister actually found him in our back yard.  I think I was a third or fourth grader when we found him and I remember it was sometime in November. He was only a little kitten and if we had not have saved him from the cold and harsh weather outside, he most likely would not have made it. We brought him in and took care of him. The next day we took him to an animal shelter but not one had reported a missing kitten. We even went door to door asking the neighbors if they knew who he belonged to. In the end, no body claimed him so he became a part of our family. My sister decided to name him Mulligan, because in golf it means "do-over or second chance". It fit the situation perfectly. One distinguishable characteristic about Mulligan is that he had a stub for a tail. We are not sure how it happened, all we know is that was the way he has always been since we found him. Mulligan was a good kitty and it was not until he was a lot older that he started causing problems. When he was about eleven or so he started really biting people. It started when we went on vacation and he stayed with my Dad's nurse while we were away. While he was there, he bit her hand and actually drew blood. She had to get medical attention. Because of this, we had to fill out an animal control paper about him. It would not be such a big deal if this was the only time he did it. It did not stop here though. A couple months later he bit my mom too. The bite also drew blood and she had to go on anti-biotic. This was getting serious and we could not imagine him biting somebody else, like my baby cousin or someone. Acting rationally, we decided that the best decision was to put him down.