Yellow eyes

On Tuesday (20 May) at 4 o'clock, I happened to look out of the window and saw something black lying in the road. A car was pulling in along the pavement and a man came out. He lifted it up. It was a cat.

I dashed outside and quickly walked the 150 yards to where the body of the cat had been left on the pavement. It was plainly dead. It had yellow eyes.

The driver, a young man, was visibly upset and didn't know how to deal with the situation. He told me he had been unable to stop, and I suspect it had dashed out from the seat by the Coastguard Station access road. Even when you only do 25 mph, you still take more than 10 yards to stop. I said to the driver that I'd ring the SSPCA and not to worry. The SSPCA told me that they would not come out for a dead animal, and to ring the council to have it uplifted. The council said that would have to wait until morning (it was now about 4.30pm). However, twenty minutes later, a car with SSPCA markings drew up at the spot and a man briefly checked over the cat's body before wrapping it up and disposing of it.

It was the friendly little cat that had been hovering around the area for the last five weeks. I am gutted and actually griefstricken. Even as I type this, two days later, I still have to actively not think of what I saw on Tuesday. It wasn't anything bloody or gruesome, but the transformation into death was awful.

I'll never forget those yellow eyes, as they gazed into the sunset last Sunday. Its obviously pleasure to see me, and to come running, calling all the way. I feel guilty that, even though I could not take it in, I didn't ring SSPCA earlier to come and pick it up, and get it a good home.

However, its death came mercifully quick, and I suspect it didn't really know what happened nor feel any pain.

What also comforted me was the response on a local Facebook page, where two employees of a company in the next street had also been wondering who the cat belonged to, thinking it had hitched a lift on a bus out of the district of Uig. They too were upset, and quite a few people in the area had noticed it as well.

Yellow eyes, I won't forget you. I'll meet you again beyond the Rainbow Bridge, alongside the two family cats that passed over there in 1988 and 2004. I'm sorry I didn't think to help you when you asked.