Gremlin

Today was a rather awful day.  Last night when I took the dog out to go potty, one of the outdoor cats was meowing like crazy.  Not unusual, he's always meowing.  I shined my flashlight towards their area and saw Jake and Gremlin outside looking at me.  I took the dog back inside but decided the next day I'd go and check on them.  Today, I took Jasmine out to play and while I was out there, Jake was meowing again, this time more insistently.  I headed out that way and immediately thought it weird that Jake was the only cat I was seeing.  I was within ten feet of the cat yard when I began to smell it.  I turned back towards the house to grab a carrier for Jake so that I could leave the doors open without him running away.  After he was safely crated and Shawn was keeping Jasmine busy, I went back out to find the source of the smell.  I glanced up and saw Gremlin, laying on the table, obviously dead.  I had to take a moment before I could go in.  He was alive last night and yet today... he just looked awful.  I still wasn't sure if Minka was alive or not and assumed she wasn't considering she hadn't come out when I was getting Jake.  I left the doors open and did my best not to look at my cat or breathe a great deal.  I called for her, not really expecting to hear anything, when she meowed.  She was inside a trash can (It's empty aside from a roll of garden hose and a tractor tire).  She wouldn't come out on her own so I had to do battle with the spiders to pull out the tire and then her.  I carried her into the house.  I dug the hole but I just couldn't get him out of there.  The smell was awful and I knew that the underside of him was bound to be worse than what I was seeing.  I eventually asked Shawn to do it for me.  (we used a shovel... I hated doing it but he was covered in bugs)  I just can't get the image of his face out of my head.  They did so much damage in the small amount of time that he was dead.  Both the other cats are indoors for the night.  I want the smell to clear and then I'm going to go clean it out a bit.  Jake obviously wasn't setting foot inside the shed and was very upset.  I wonder if it would've made a difference if I had actually went out there last night.  When I was out there the other day, everyone was fine.  Gremlin seemed a little dehydrated but other than that, he seemed good.  Since we moved into this house, I have lost so many animals.  I know it's not the house but it makes it that much harder to stay here.  There are some days I feel as if I will be stuck in this house for the rest of my life.  I love this house.  Honestly.  But I don't want to live in this area.  I want the kind of privacy that you just can't get when you live this close to the city.  Not to mention that we are drowning in debt from the bills.  I want to start over and do it better and the only way to do that is to sell this house