song I wrote on the piano when I was a young girl
“Sneakers was a cat
A very happy cat
Until the others came along…
She felt so invaded
when these cats paraded
Into the dome and peak of her happiness…”
I dreamed and prayed (after my own fashion)
desperately
that the cats would all curl up on the foot of the bed together and not fight.
I don’t know what was in my head other than what I have just said.
Sneakers was my mother’s cat, or, her first cat, a stray;
and she usually scratched me.
We had 11 gerbils in one regular size glass aquarium.
That was just too gross. Somehow we got a male and a female and they bred.
The cats just sat and watched.
The acquarium tipped over somehow and they all got out. Thank God.
As an adult I had one child. I got up the nerve to get a little brown mouse and I adored her. Of course, she was for Ian. But on her very first day I heard her crying in his room and I just couldn’t leave her in there alone so I put her in the dining room, because it was just the only place for her. Sandy got all attached to her and so did I. It was not a healthy experience of having a pet. We treated her more like she was a cat or a dog because that was what Ian really needed but I just wouldn’t have been able to handle it. This is a very guilty matter for me. Somewhere in there I was saying, no one is going to care what happens to a little mouse. I didn’t want to harm her, I had just never had responsibility for a pet before,,, my cat Daisy walked away from me and went to my roommate and then my mother when the apartment broke up in my twenties. Then, I threatened my mother when she said she was going to give one of Daisy’s kittens away. So we had all five of them for life. 3 of them lived 20 years.
In other words, pets were a serious issue/problem for me. Sandy said–after Cocoa the mouse–that I should not get another pet.
Now I’ve moved into Ian’s space (the cottage) and automatically assumed responsibility for his cats. It was working out well with the proviso that they were not my cats they were his. But he was losing interest, obviously, after 6 years. A good job. He was growing away from this place, the site and scene of a lot of his childhood. Now that my mother is gone. He had been so desperate for a CAT all his life, not just any pet. But he got Cocoa and he really did love her just so much.
But there has been an issue here all along with one of the cats and inappropriateness. One night I had left the upstairs door to the outside open and was preoccupied on the computer and they both jumped out. Travis didn’t come back in. He stayed out for at least a month. I found out my mother was feeding him out there without telling anybody. I went out and called for him by the barn and he came to me. I took the risk of picking him up knowing that if I brought him back inside he was stuck again. He came back in with me and it was months before he readjusted. The pair of them hadnt been getting along. I had had a little time to bond with Tanner, the smaller cat. One of the issues had been that Travis, the one who took off that night, was bullying Tanner and wouldn’t permit him to come near me.
At other times they were friends and played games with me.
Obviously I was in a pretty weird place myself to be so absorbed with two cats and no person in sight. My mother and father were across the and through the glass porch and my son visited frequently. I was recovering from a 2 year hospitalization after a horrible overdose.
The cats had to put up with me. I was in a state like death much of the day. At night I was up spitting into a towel because of the excess spit from the Clozaril. I was often in bed until 4. I was glad if I was up by 2.
It was not a healthy situation but what can you do with someone who lingered between life and death for so long? My parents were good to keep me. Especially if they didn’t want to.
I am so much better now. I am beginning to turn the corner. 5 years later.
So, I have a long history of inappropriate behavior with cats starting with the cat in college that I wrote about RECENTLY in a post on one of these sites. And about how sad I was for him. The worst was when I got close to my mother’s cat Sasha and then had to be the one who put her down after my mother went. Travis and Tanner were terrified when I brought her body home in the cat carrier. I couldn’t afford cremation. My father had not given me enough money for that. And then he acted angry when he had to dig a grave. And she wasn’t even my cat! She was my mother’s cat!
So, it’s OBVIOUS I had to marry a Mackintosh. That’s my takeaway from all this. I forced him to marry me. Even while he was deceiving me into marrying him for his Green Card, I was forcing him to marry me because I needed to become Clan of the Cat.
Anything goes.
Within reason.
Oh Yes, and I will be going. Soon. And I will be gone. And I just decided that they WILL come with me. Travis and Tanner. They just need a change of scene. I don’t think anybody else would be able to understand them after what they have lived through here since 2012. (2013?)
Un.Bon.Mot 