R.I.P Mr. Jingles

I am sad to say our cat Mr. Jingles is now in kitty heaven. Mr. Jingles has only been a part of our family now for a couple of months, but he will be missed dearly. What an emotional evening it has been. Let me go back in time to Monday at about 11:30 p.m. Mr. S and I are sitting inside when all of a sudden we hear our cat making this horrible sound. We figured he was getting into a fight with a fellow neighborhood cat so we run out to intervene. We couldn't have been more wrong as to what was going on. We just so happen to live next door to people who own a pit bull. Now nothing against people out there who own pit bulls, but I just so happen to really dislike them. However our neighbors dog is not so bad. He just happens to HATE cats. Somehow our cat ended up in their yard. Big misake. Now why Mr. Jingles went into their yard I have no idea. He definitely knew better. Maybe he got confused or maybe he was just curious. Our neighbor was able to get his dog off of our cat before he tore him to tiny shreds, but damage was done. We brought Mr. Jingles inside to survey the damage. I don't know what was more sad the cats injuries or our precious little weenie dog Hammie. Hammie was so upset. From the moment we walked in the door with the cat Hammie was hysterical. He was barking and crying and running in circles. This went on for the next three hours. Yes I said THREE hours. He finally stopped crying around 2:30 a.m. and fell asleep out of pure exhaustion. I have never seen anything like it before in my life. Mr. Jingles was doing ok for the most part. His right back leg was obviously broken and we weren't sure if he might have internal bleeding. We decided that the next morning my husband would take him to our vet on the way to work. So the following morning I anxiously ran into the bathroom to see how Mr. Jingles was doing (all the while praying he was still alive) and found a very tired but ALIVE cat. Mr. S ended up going to work for a little bit because the vet wasn't open. Now how the next events transpired i'm not too sure. All I know is somehow the cat got loose and ran off. How in the world does a cat who can barely walk run away? We still have no idea. Mr. S looks all day for the cat but has no luck. As soon as I got off work we started our search party.....we even brought Hammie along hoping he could find him with his great sniffer. Still no luck. It started to get dark so we decided to head home. We all pretty much figured that the cat had wondered off to die somewhere (we still were not sure if he had internal bleeding). Okay so that was Tuesday and it is now Thursday. In between now and then a cold front has moved in and it has been raining pretty much non stop. Around 1:00 p.m. today my husband calls me and says "I found the cat and he's ALIVE!" What? Where? When? How? WTF? I couldn't believe it! Mr. Jingles had managed to walk/drag himself into the cow pasture (yes there were several cows walking around him....one even walked up and smelled him) next to where my husband works. His back leg was really swollen and the poor thing looked like he had been to hell and back but he was ALIVE. What a will to live he had. I really was willing to do anything to give this cat a shot at life. He obviously wanted to live. So off to the vet we go! The vet was really surprised he had made it this long and an even bigger surprise was he had no fever and obviously no internal bleeding just a broken leg. It was really infected though and the break was so bad it couldn't be reset. She told us his leg would have to be amputated for any hope of survival. She felt though that he had a good chance and that cats lived all of the time with three legs. Ok great lets do it! I mean I knew it would be expensive, but I really was willing to do anything. Here's the kicker....they had to have the money tonite right then and there before they would do anything. Not next week when we got paid. Not even in the morning. Oh and did I mention it was $750. Oh yea we have that just sitting around. I can't tell you how much frustration I felt at that moment in time. I wanted to scream and cry and throw things. I wanted to rip her stupid head off. I even offered to give her my cat if she would just save it. Just SAVE my very ALIVE cat who had just made it 2 days out in the cold rain with basically his two front legs working. Then to make things worse Alex started to sob. I'm really angry now. Then I start crying hysterically because my baby is crying. I'm thinking why can't you just give us until the morning to find the money? Of course by this time it's already too late to go to another vets office. We could have left and taken the cat home, but the poor thing was in so much pain it just wouldn't have been right to do. Plus there is no guarantee we would have been able to come up with that kind of money in 12 hours. Plus there was not even a guarantee that the surgery would have worked. The vet was concerned that the infection might have spread throughout his body and his organs might be shutting down. I personally think she was just telling me this to make me feel better about having to put my very much ALIVE cat to sleep. To sleep is just what we had to do. I don't feel better knowing he is "out of his misery." I feel like total dog shit. I'm pissed that today I had to make a decision that made my child(hell my whole family) so sad and hurt so bad just because I didn't have enough money. Money money money. That is all it is about. There is no compassion. None. (My logic tells me the vet has to make money and can't just do work on the hopes that a person will pay) HOWEVER i'm not very logical right now! I'm angry, sad, frustrated and tired.
I stayed with Mr. Jingles while they put him down and Alex waited in the waiting room with dad. Then we headed to the shop where Mr. S works and buried him near that cow pasture. R.I.P Mr. Jingles....I know he is now free and running with all four legs in Kitty Heaven.