Spare Me

Two years ago I lost my cat. Well, that’s not entirely true… My cat is presumed dead, but I didn’t lose him.

Our family was traveling, and my mother in law was watching the house & pet sitting. The dogs were at her house, but the cats remained at our house where she checked in on them when she collected the mail etc. We’ve done this dozens of times before, but this time there was a problem.

My mother in law, Lisa, is an alcoholic. Normally her falls off the wagon are spotted quickly by either her husband or her parents and she’s put into treatment. But as alcoholics are rather good at hiding their problem — as well as the booze itself — there are small periods of time in which Lisa is both under the influence and without supervision until they (or, on occasion, the police) find her in trouble.

That time two years ago was one of those times.

Back from treatment just a few weeks & presumed to be well, she drove to our home to see to it that everything was OK. Only she wasn’t OK. She was drunk.

What happened is unclear, but a few days after we were home we discovered Harley was missing. Why did it take a few days to notice his absence? Well, as a 12 year old cat, we knew his time was near because the formerly friendly lap-loving cat now hid himself in the house and we’d go days without seeing him — or noticing his urine on the carpet. (As he was still eating & eliminating, able to walk, and seemed pain-free, we had decided to wait for his old age symptoms to change to ‘on the way out’ signs before we would do anything.)

Anyway, we’re home for two days when I started to worry and begin asking everyone in the house if they’d seen Harley. When no one could confirm a Harley sighting since our return my worry turned to panic.

I kept it cool in front of the kids & sent them off to school; then my husband & I began a frantic search of the house.

At first I was just hoping to find the cat alive and hiding somewhere, but after two full sweeps of the house I feared I’d find his little lifeless body.

I can’t tell you the mixed emotions I had. Hoping I’d find him, fearing I’d find him, and a heightened sense of absurdity that after no less than five sweeps of the entire house by two grown adults who left no pillow or stuffed animal unturned there was still no Harley.

Finally we had to conclude that Harley was not in the building. …But had he left euphemistically like Elvis?

Even though the cats are not outside cats we moved our search outside. We did this because the math — no cat in the house — dictated, logically, that the cat was outside the house. We did this because we had to have something to do while still avoiding what was becoming increasing clear…

But I was still in denial — denial born of the incongruity of the situation. How & why does an indoor cat of 12 years go outside?

As we walked the neighborhood looking for the cat, my husband tried to gently bring up the obvious… How Harley wasn’t feeling well… How animals sometimes go off to die… How maybe he should be the one to look in the window wells and under the porches — was I prepared for what I might find?

No; no I wasn’t.

I began to cry, hubby’s arm ’round my shoulder as we returned home.

But still we knew that a cat just doesn’t disappear. Not even a cat who wants to go away to die can disappear. He had to have gotten outside somehow…

Eventually my husband said that we needed to call and ask his folks if they knew anything. At this point I was thinking, “What kind of a person doesn’t tell people their pet died?” But I can’t say anything; mainly because I still can’t bring myself to say Harley’s name in the same breath as any form of the word ‘dead’.

There’s no answer at his folk’s house, so my husband called Lisa’s parents. We discover that Lisa’s back in treatment. No one wanted to call us while we were away and no one was home to tell us when we’d used our key to Mick’s parent’s house to pick up the dogs upon our return (something we’d done dozens of times). Everyone thought it’d be nice if they’d give us a few days back home before telling us the news. It felt odd to press on about a missing cat when Lisa was facing her demons, again, but still… I loved my cat.

Hubby asked his grandmother if she knew anything about the cat, explaining that Harley was missing. An odd “ohhh” came over the phone. “So that’s what she meant.”

The day Lisa was caught drinking again was because she showed up at her parents house quite upset & babbling about having let Moxie, our little dog, outside. Given that this is where dogs poo, and that Lisa’s house has a completely fenced in yard, no one could understand why Lisa was so upset. But Lisa continued to freak out about Moxie being outside, becoming so agitated & fixated that all her parents could do was leverage her upset into a deal: They’d take her home to see the dogs and then she’d check herself into treatment.

Lisa agreed — even seemed relieved rather than her usual defensive-self at the mention of treatment. They drove her home and found both the dogs there, safe and sound. Then it was off to rehab. Everyone put the incident down to too much drink and that was that.

Only that wasn’t that.

My cat was lost.

Lost by a drunk woman who apparently had seen the cat get out, but was in no condition to do anything about it. Then she drove for help but was so out of it she didn’t know which animal or even what house it was.

Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.

Driving drunk she was lucky she didn’t make matters worse and hurt or kill someone. We’d escaped that, thank heavens. Normally that’s what we do; we hope for the best with this round of rehab, count our blessings and our narrow escapes.

However, something else had escaped too — my cat.

And I wanted him back.

But I couldn’t scream about how upsetting and dumb this was. I shouldn’t further upset my husband; his mother’s put the family through a lot and I should at least spare him my anger.

I tried to console myself that this was the way Harley wanted it. He went off to die alone. And I was spared finding his limp, lifeless body.

But, as I would have told Harley himself, I didn’t want to be spared that. I wanted to stroke his fur, hold him in my lap, say goodbye… Even if he’d already left.

It’s bad enough to have been denied my proper goodbye with a beloved pet of 12 years. But it’s even worse to have to deny yourself anger. Not just as a stage of grief, but the justifiable anger directed at an irresponsible person who cost you someone you love, the goodbye you should have had.

And I’ve had to counsel the children that grandma’s disease prevented her from having the proper judgment to control the situation, creating an opportunity for Harley to sneak out to die. “It was an accident, kids.”

It was an accident; but still…

Because Lisa is an alcoholic, I should hold her accountable for her actions and my angry grief. The children’s too. But because she’s so often away at rehab for extended periods of time with visits I don’t want to ruin, it never seems to be the proper time and place. Thanksgiving, for example, seems a very wrong time. As we go around the table saying what we are thankful for, am I supposed to say, “I’m thankful Lisa only lost one of my pets.”

In order to hold Lisa accountable I’d have to upset a whole bunch of other people — I’d like to spare them all that, at least on a holiday. And that’s typically when we see her now.

And because I’m one of the newest members of the family, my guess is that I’m quite far back at the end of the line of people who want & deserve their chance to hold Lisa accountable. So I should wait my turn and spare others any extra wait time.

But all this sparing is a lot like stifling.

Who is going to spare me that?