The Short and Happy Life of Achoo

Achoo the kitten has been gone for nearly a week, and our hearts are broken as we realize she is undoubtedly dead. She and Sprout the dog went outside to play one day when I was at work. Achoo wouldn’t come in from the yard when Nereida had to go to town. We’d left the kitten out before because she knows where home is and always stays close. But she didn’t come in after Nereida came home, and it was an evening of thunderstorms and rain. I suggested she leave the front door open a little and Achoo would come in to eat, or, more likely, would come in to use the litter box. But she didn’t come in.

Achoo didn't come home on Friday, either. I thought perhaps she'd taken refuge at a nearby vacant house where other neighborhood cats hang out, or had climbed a tree and couldn't get down, or had followed Sprout out of the yard and had become lost in the woods, unable to keep up with the dog.

I had to fly to New York early Saturday morning, and Achoo was still missing. I was home Sunday for a few hours and hiked the woods around the house listening for Achoo’s weak meows. No Achoo.

Later in the day, Nereida thought she saw Achoo in the driveway. I looked through the window and saw an animal on its belly in a slight depression, but it wasn’t our cat. It stood and ran downhill through the tall grass and weeds toward the creek. It looked a little like a large muskrat or small beaver, but the tail was long and furry and it didn’t waddle but ran.

Nereida, Sprout, and I, were all aware of some small animal living across the street in the woods and brush. We’d never seen it, but we could hear it rustling around when we went to the road for the papers and mail. It occurred to me that the animal might have killed Achoo, if it was a carnivore of some kind.

When I got back to New York, I checked on the Internet for an animal fitting the impression I had of this animal’s appearance. Nothing fit. It was too large to be any kind of weasel I was familiar with.

Thinking of Achoo and her probable fate, it was and is hard to hold back tears. She was the sweetest, happiest cat I’ve ever known, and seeing Nereida’s delight in the fuzzy creature warmed my heart immensely. I could imagine Achoo running up to the strange animal, thinking it another friendly dog to play with.

I asked the crew I was flying with if they knew of any animal in this part of the country that might fit what I saw. They suggested a badger but weren't sure what its tail looks like. Size seemed about right, though, so I looked up badgers on the Internet when I got home early this morning. Nope, too much color variation in the animal, and the tail is short. So I looked up weasels. All are too small except the fisher.

Fishers fit what we saw in the drivewy. I didn’t get a clear look at the animal’s head because the tail was distinctive and grabbed my attention, but a fisher’s ears are small enough that they could have gone unnoticed while I was looking at the tail during the one or two seconds I had the animal in view.

Brushy woods across the street are ideal habitat for fishers, and they eat animals their size and smaller. So I think it is a fisher that killed Achoo and returned to the scene of the kill, perhaps hoping there were more such tasty morsels around.

A fisher in the neighborhood might explain the scarcity of young raccoons this year and the dwindling numbers of half-grown, semi-wild kittens in the neighborhood.

I will call the wildlife department to ask if it’s legal to trap or kill game- or fur-bearing animals out of season on my property to protect my pets. I’ll try to kill this thing anyway, but I’d like to know if I have to be sneaky in doing it.

We’ll want another kitten soon, but we don’t want to lose another one, especially this way.