Redoubling my efforts to get OUT of Collinsville

Tonight my children were thoroughly traumatized. The boy who lives across the street, who's a couple of years older than Isaac, has played with us on and off throughout the year. We have known him to be prone to lying about things, using swear words, and taking things that don't belong to him, but we've let him know what we approve of and what we don't.

Tonight, however, the die is cast. My children will no longer play with him, under ANY circumstances, because he took that beautiful white cat (which we call Pearl) and tossed him into the next-door yard with five huge, ill-behaved and untrained dogs (the former cute puppies about whom I blogged last winter). My children came running into the house, frantic, because (of course) the dogs did what came naturally to them. The guilty boy then jumped into the yard, retrieved the cat and flung him back out. By the time I got out, poor Pearl was lying prostrate on the ground, panting and gasping, with blood coming out of his mouth.

After marching him across the street to make him tell his mother what he'd done (which, of course, he "smoothed-over" and lied about just enough to make it sound like he hadn't really meant to do it), I herded my family back into the house. Even two episodes of Spongebob couldn't divert us. I'm not sure anything will, to be perfectly honest. We're all horrified and livid. Alice is completely devastated.

Rick stayed outside and said that he actually was able to get up and stand after a while, so perhaps he'll recover. I hope so; he's a beautiful and loving kittycat who never scratched the kids but always came over for skritches and petting.

And I am wholeheartedly now looking at apartment complexes in Denton. I didn't think I'd ever want to move into an apartment with three children, but I don't want us to live in this place a moment longer than we have to. A boy across the street who abuses animals, lies, and does other wrong things on a regular basis is just not someone I want my kids to have to associate with.

I had to give everyone some Benadryl tonight, because nobody could sleep. If you have kittycats, please give them extra treats and skritches for me tonight.