Bonnie Cayen has hardly slept a wink this week.
“I’ve just been a mess,” Cayen said. “She’s my shadow. She followed me everywhere … slept with me.”
Cayen, 54, is talking about her three-year-old cat Maggie. Or, as she was affectionately nicknamed, “Boo Boo Kitty.”
Maggie died Saturday evening after being hit by a pickup while sitting on a patch of grass at Trafalgar Street and Carson Lane.
“He literally stopped his truck, aimed it at her … and gunned it,” Cayen told Metro. “How can you do that to an innocent little cat?”
Cayen missed the attack, but neighbours saw the large, new-model dark blue or black pickup that took Maggie’s life. Witnesses gave chase, but the lost the truck a few blocks away when it hit Hamilton Road traffic.
Kerrie Quantrill saw it happen. She was outside her home, which is a few houses away from the corner.
“I was sickened,” she said. ” I just don’t understand people like that.”
Maggie was sort of a mascot for Cayen’s Trafalgar Street neighbourhood. She sat on the corner where she died practically every night, waiting on Cayen to return home from walking her Bassett hound, Harry.
The black long-haired cat had a bit of a special place in everyone’s heart, partially because of the way she came into their lives.
Like Cayen’s other cats, Maggie was a rescue — saved from the park across the street where it’s not uncommon to find abandoned pets. When Maggie first made her way into Cayen’s home, she was eight months old, had matted fur and, literally, was starving to death.
“I could feel every bone in her,” Cayen said. “She was so starved she hadn’t grown.”
In the two years since, Maggie’s weight had doubled to six pounds and she was on track for a long healthy life.
“If I can find out for sure who did this, I definitely will press charges,” Cayen said. “She should still be here.”
