Why I Am Not Afraid To Talk About Hunting

When I moved to Tennessee, my cat died. I didn’t talk about it publicly because no one cares when your cat dies. But my cat’s death was traumatizing to me. 

I adopted her when I was living alone in New York City. I got caught in a festival while trying to cross the street. At the end of it was a truck with animals who were going to die if they were not adopted. My soon-to-be-adopted cat had her head down, as though she had accepted defeat and was going to die. So, I decided I need that little ball of drama in my life. She was so sweet, practically human, and also so scared. She was afraid of every single sound in the city, and she would run under the bed and hide all the time. And she remained a true scaredy cat when we moved to Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C. But when we moved to Tennessee, something changed. Maybe the air was different, but she started just bolting outside. Every day she would go a little farther in the backyard. She had been terrified of everything and all of a sudden she was trying to get outside. One night, she ran out and did not come back; two coyotes killed her on our front porch. It was devastating. She didn’t know the outside. Four years old but she had never lived outside. She didn’t even know what a coyote was.