Kitty Conundrum: Found, Cant' Keep, Part 2

It all climaxed one morning when I heard Little Kitty yowling at 1am. I dozed back to sleep until 3am, when suddenly, my wall was shaking with the thunderous sound of my neighbor’s fist pounding vigorously on our shared wall. I couldn’t respond right away, as I was still waking up to the reality that my neighbor was pounding on my wall. But the cat yowled again, and he pounded again, and I was out of bed and knocking on the wall in response as I made  my way down the loft stairs and crept outside in the dark, cool, spring night.

What the fuck do I do?

I picked up the cat and brought her inside, where I placed her in the cat carrier a kind neighbor had lent me. I put the carrier and cat in the bathtub. She yowled, and the sound echoed off the tile walls.. I opened the cat carrier. I put a towel down in the bathtub and some food out on the floor. I left the light on and closed the door behind me, yearning to crawl back into my warm bed. She yowled. I went in, petted her some, turned the light off and went out and shut the door. She yowled. I grabbed two sweatshirts and stuffed them at the bottom of the door to muffle the sound. She yowled.

I opened the bathroom door and let her roam the house, something she had only ever done twice before, and never at night. She roamed, and yowled. I threw open the camping pad that was currently Jack’s play area couch, and set up a bed on the floor, thinking that from there, I could soothe the cat into quietness, and hopefully get back to sleep myself.

I spent the next three hours - the aching dark, tired hours of the morning - going from quieting the cat to quieting Jack stirring in his bed. There was nothing else I could do but lean into the ridiculousness of it all, and pray hard for help. It certainly grounded me into the reality that an end to this cat needed to come, and soon.

I finally got the cat to settle down with me, snuggled up like a real house cat, purring at my side. We slept like that for an hour, once I finally stopped thinking about the fleas, dirt, and possibly worms that were now in my house. And it took awhile for the questions to settle down; do I keep her? She’s not doing too bad with her first night inside. She’s so affectionate. Do I like this kitty cuddling? Am I really the cat person I always thought I was? If I give her up, does it mean I’m not really a cat person? Does it mean I’m less capable and giving and nurturing than I thought? Less responsible and grounded and stable? Am I giving up part of my relationship with Matt if I let this kitty go?

The next morning, I put the cat back outside first thing. A few minutes later, Jack brought her inside, snuggling and loving her, saying he loves this cat, and it’s his cat, and she just laid there and took all his toddler attention. For a moment, I questioned my decision. After losing his dad, how do I justify taking away this warm, furry, live comfort? Even with her fleas and dirt and possible disease? Will he really miss her? Will I have to watch him grieve? For the love of God, help my mommy heart. And yet, to think about keeping her, with all the fleas and the ants getting into her food, and the responsibility that I would have to take care of her no matter what happened in the future… I just couldn’t. 

I called the Humane Society and told them that our distress had mounted, and I needed to bring her in as soon as possible. Suddenly, they said bring her in whenever! Why hadn’t that been immediately available when I first called, I wondered in frustration. Finally, that afternoon, I found myself driving into the Humane Society parking lot, with the cat in the carrier on the seat next to me. All the frenzy of logistics and decisions to get to this point slowed down, as I parked and prepared to say goodbye. The staff inside was really friendly, and sat me at a table cluttered with various pet items.

They brought me some paperwork to fill out, while Little Kitty looked at me through the cage bars of her carrier. Filling out that relinquishment form was eerily familiar. The last life I was legally responsible for relinquishing on paper was my husband’s. The funeral home paperwork; a blur of lines as I was too blown out to even read. I could only sign where they pointed.

As I signed the kitty away, I couldn’t help but feel some shame, and imagine that I was letting Matt down in my decision not to keep her. As if she were a thread between our souls, and by relinquishing her, I was giving up a piece of Matt. And yet… to keep her felt burdensome and messy. The hard part was that I had a choice, this time.

I finished the form and glanced around the room while waiting for the staff to come back and tell me what to do next. I noticed a table in the corner, covered with about a half dozen wooden boxes, some smaller than others. Each box had a piece of paper with a photo on it, rubber-banded around the box. Just then, a man walked in and quietly placed another box with the others. Somehow, I knew right away that they were urns; there had been a sign out front about pet cremation.

Well, shit. I just rolled my eyes and shook my head. Figures that the universe would make a hard thing even harder, by deepening the parallels of my loss. It felt like salt in the gaping wound of my heart, and all I could do was just sit there and take it.

The woman came in and reviewed my paperwork, reading the “reason for relinquishment” section, where I played the widow card in my explanation of why I was choosing not to keep her. The staff woman entered some info into the computer and said she was trying to find the best choice from the drop-down menu for reason. The best she could come up with was “found, can’t keep.” I loved that reason! I felt so validated and relieved at such a simple truth! I laughed even, saying, “well, it only took me five years after finding her to realize I can’t keep her!” But it was okay, this reason was telling me. They made it ok.

The woman then asked me if I wanted a moment to say goodbye. I unexpectedly started tearing up at just the thought of it. She politely left the room, and I was overcome with a wave of sorrow. I opened the cage and Little Kitty poked her sweet head tenderly into my hand. I surprised myself with speaking out loud to her quite freely, which doesn’t usually come easy to me. I told her that I was so grateful for her sweet presence in our backyard all this time, and for starting to teach Jack about being a pet owner. Some tears came, and then there was a burning, tearing feeling, as I felt a tidal wave of grief bang at the back of my throat. It wasn’t just a cat, it was another familiar face that had been part of my landscape before and after Matt Died.

I had to tamp things down, keep Little Kitty from getting all the way out of the carrier, and also didn’t want to be a complete mess with all these strangers around. After all, I was choosing this. Did I deserve to be as sad as I felt?

The woman came back after a minute, and told me that the cat would go right to the clinic for some pain medicine, and was scheduled for her eye removal surgery the very next day! I was pleasantly surprised, and realized - I had done that. I had gotten her to the place where she would be taken care of, and it wasn’t going to be my burden to hold anymore. On the other side of her recovery, Little Kitty would be put up for adoption. And it wouldn’t be me needing to feed her anymore, no more fighting the ants off of her food out back, no more boxes and boxes of wet food cans to recycle. No more yowling, no more stressing about the neighbors.

There was a stillness after Little Kitty was gone that was both relieving and oppressively sad. The vacuum of silence in her absence left room to feel so many other things. Loss of companionship, familiarity, that bridge to all things Matt…as well as potential, space for a new kind of gain… relief. Appreciation of the birds and wild beauty of our backyard. I felt like my perspective widened from “what to do with this cat,” to deep connection with earth and nature around me. And Matt.

I did not get to keep Matt, either.

And then it got me thinking… do we really get to keep anything?

***

I just looked on the SB Humane Society website, stalking “Little Kitty.” She wasn’t in the “L”s where I would have expected her, alphabetically. And then I saw a “Cathy,” with clearly the left eye removed. I harkened back and thought, yes, it was her left eye they would have taken out. I looked closer, and… Cathy was Little Kitty!!! 

She was photographed on a staff member’s lap, and the description says:

“Cathy is pretty much the sweetest kitty you will ever meet. She is a little love bug who thinks that the best place in the entire world is in a warm lap. She will nuzzle in close and purr loudly. Cathy is a very happy girl who will make some adopter very happy.”

I felt tears of relief, having wondered if she had made it through the treatment process alive. She had! And then I wondered… what have I done? I chose to let go of “the sweetest kitty you will ever meet.” And why did they name her Cathy? She clearly had come in with the name Little Kitty; I wrote it on the form. In giving her away, I gave up her name, too? That seemed excessive. 

Just seeing her familiar fur markings brought back a feeling of comfort she provided, by being part of my apartment setting for the last five years. Did I want her back? Would she work as an indoor cat? Did I want an aggressive snuggler, purring, clawing, and drooling on my lap? My mind sorted through possibilities of who I could send in to adopt her back, since I couldn’t as the relinquisher.

And then I remembered why I let her go in the first place. One less thing to take care of. Honoring my position as a solo working parent, not knowing what the future holds, and knowing that I can’t be everything to everyone - or every cat. Or even the cat I had just given up. So I’ll share the link with my friends, and pray that she finds a good home, quickly.

https://www.sbhumanesociety.org/adopt/cats-for-adoption-pf/

Kitty Conundrum: Found, Can't Keep, Part 1

Just five months into dating, Matt and I moved into an apartment together. The landlord, who was moving out of the unit we were moving into, mentioned a little kitty living under the house that he had been feeding along with his own cat. We didn’t think much of it. The day we moved in, we stood in the small backyard, surveying our domain and the view down the canyon to the ocean beyond. Matt pulled me in close to him with his strong arm, and we chatted together with excitement, satisfaction, and curiosity of how this new adventure would unfold in our still-budding relationship.  

The little kitty came running up to us, meowing loudly and rubbing up against Matt’s leg. Matt greeted it warmly, like he did with just about every living creature. After looking at it for a few minutes, he exclaimed that it might be the now-grown kitten he had had when he lived on this land years before.

So we fed the cat together; and since Matt passed, I’ve continued to feed her for a total of five years. All with the belief that she was Matt’s cat from years before we met, which would make her at least 13 years old. She mostly stayed out of our way, quietly occupying our backyard, and becoming an expected familiar face.

A few months ago, she started meowing earlier and earlier in the morning to get fed. She was spatting with the unfixed male neighbor cat; he was mounting her, and they would yowl and hiss all night. Part of me was jealous. That cat was getting more action than me. She continued yowling at all hours, even after the frenzy of spring or the full moon seemed to fade from the neighbor’s cat. I’m not sure if Little Kitty is even fertile; I’ve never seen her have kittens, or do the “bootie dance,” as one vet tech called it in one of many phone calls to try and figure out what to do with this cat.

Over the past couple of weeks, her yowling became distressing, as it literally sounded like she was saying, “OW!” The neighbor who shares a wall on one side asked me a few times what was up with the cat. I said I didn’t know, but I thought she was really old, and was waiting for her to kick it.

And then the yowling became unbearable. She was clearly in distress of some sort, and I noticed that one of her eyes had gone dark. Perhaps she was going blind, and that was causing her to yowl? For days, I agonized what to do about this cat. Each yowl sent a shot of adrenaline into my heart, knowing she was in distress, and knowing it was totally up to me to make a decision. Do I treat and keep the cat? Get rid of the cat? Each idea had the weight of how… and of having to figure it out all on my own.  

I shared my conundrum with a friend, unable to contain the emotional stress on my own. This friend has a background in animal hide tanning and farm work, and she very practically asked if the cat just needed to be taken out and shot. While somewhat shocking to consider, I actually spent a good 36 hours thoroughly thinking through that option.

Perhaps I thought about it too much. In the shadow of the loss of my husband that was totally out of my control, it was overwhelming to think about being 100% in control of taking a life. Little Kitty seemed to have so much life in her still. Who was I to decide when her time was up?! And how would we do it? How do you shoot a cat without it turning into a splattered mess? Could I be there and “midwife” her through that transition, without undue trauma of seeing a blood everywhere? A complex fantasy developed of having a shared crossing experience with this cat, journeying with her soul out of her body, and sending her to the other side, back to Matt, with the message, “SEND HELP. I can’t do this on my own anymore.”

In the end, I couldn’t reconcile choosing to end her life, at least not without more information that that was the direction she was heading anyway. I called a mobile vet clinic and was able to set up an exam for that afternoon. I was relieved. And also still in the escape fantasy of putting her down (more humanely) with the vet, and me still midwifing her transition. As it was, the vet and tech went right for the eye, and after thorough examination, determined that she had iris melanosis, with secondary glaucoma. It’s painful, the vet said. But otherwise, she seemed healthy, was superbly behaved, and was even purring at one point during the exam. They also said that she didn’t seem like she was that old. Not old enough to fit the timeline of being Matt’s cat from years ago. So I had an identity crisis about who this cat was, and how much was I responsible for her.

When the vet mentioned that she would be fine after getting her eye removed, and how much that could cost, I welled up in outrage and resistance. Chin trembling, I told them that there was no way I was spending over a grand to take care of this cat that I never fully decided I wanted anyway. I guess I found the edge of my cat ownership.

Hence ensued over a week of calling the ASAP shelter, the Humane Society, and Animal Control, sort of getting the runaround about when and where I could bring this cat. According to the county, I was the legal owner because I had been feeding her for more than 30 days. The three, two-hour windows they have per week for owner relinquishment conflicted with my work commitments. Meanwhile, Little Kitty continued to yowl, driving a stake of suffering into my heart each time I heard her. I finally got an appointment for the next Saturday, a few days away.

Of course, in the anticipation of saying goodbye, my son decided to snuggle her every day, pick her up, call her “my kitty,” and otherwise break my heart at the thought of relinquishment. But the peace and freedom I envisioned on the other side of relinquishing ownership held me fast to my plan. Click here to read Part 2 of the Kitty Conundrum: Found, Can’t Keep.