Feline Fine

You really want to hear my story? That makes you a little different. Most don’t. I am an uncomfortable truth and they wish I’d keep my mouth shut. There’s a cancer in our society. It allows bad people to prosper. They thrive on our silence and the way we subdue the truth in favour of an easy life. I will tell you my story. It’s a little different each time. It grows you see. Like people living a good life grow.

It’s not that I don’t like cats. Not really. I like the theory of them. But in practice it all goes wrong. My eyes water and I start to wheeze. After that, it’s all downhill. That is an unfortunate fact of my life. Me and cats are not to be. Well, that was what I thought and that was how it was for most of my life. The world has a habit of challenging us though. Whether we like it or not.

The question of me liking the challenges that I pinballed through became rhetorical. They happened regardless of how I felt about them. I won’t bore you with the gory details. I’d be here forever and a day. Suffice to say there are many ways to experience loss. Sometimes death occurs within a still breathing individual. The lights are on, but there is no longer anyone inside. I sometimes wonder whether there ever was anyone inside when it comes to Samantha. We had the best of times at first, but it ended with the worst of times. I held on to those good times for far too long. I doubt they were ever real. They never meant anything to Samantha and that bled any of the good out of them. Memories can be manipulated almost as easily as people can.

Her daughter, Megan, was a different kettle of fish. Megan was Megan. Oh! She was feisty and wayward. Always two steps ahead. She ran me ragged. I asked other parents whether that was normal. The ones with daughters laughed when I brought them a current challenge; that’s daughters for you! I wish I’d thought to disclose more. To provide a comprehensive picture instead of only ever bringing out a single jigsaw piece. If you’re lucky, you live and learn.

There is the story of the frog in the pan of water. Put the frog in hot water and as you would expect, it will jump out. However, place the frog in water that is at the perfect temperature and it will stay. And it will remain in that pan as the temperature creeps up degree by degree. That frog will stay right where it is as the pain ramps up to excruciating levels. You can trick that frog into its foolhardy demise by luring it into a false sense of security. That was my life with Samantha.

Some say I’m lucky to have gotten out of it. Most think I’m the one in the wrong. We are all quick to judge, using short and selective unreliable memories filtered through our own self-serving wants. This wrongful judgement should not hurt. But it does I’m afraid. I’m flawed that way. I seek approval. Samantha saw me coming and knew exactly how to exploit my willingness to please.

I said I wouldn’t bore you with the gory details. Suffice to say that Megan’s father was bad seed. Not that you’d have known. On the surface he was like anyone else. Behind closed doors though, that was a very different matter. That could be said for any one of us. Thankfully most of us are inherently good, or just too damn lazy to cause too much trouble for themselves.

Everything crept up on us. Or rather on me. The drip of water on a stone that eventually bores a hole right through it. My heart was skewered, dismantled and the pieces shattered. I thought I’d experienced the worst, but that was only the start. A prelude to earth-shattering revelation after world ending realisation.

The day the police knocked on the door, I wasn’t ready. You’re never ready for something like that. That was the truth of it. I hadn’t read the script. Things like this did not happen. I’d cushioned myself with a self-serving fiction. The two officers came in and I made tea for them prior to them dismantling my defences and allowing cold reality to flood in. I saw the way they looked at me. When they asked for Samantha I knew. They’d come here to see Samantha, not me. That pushed me back a little and gave me room to breathe, and as I thought of Samantha I saw why they were here.

The sound of the mug crashing against the kitchen floor alerted me to it slipping from my grasp. But I could not comprehend how its demise had come to be. There was a disconnect. Surely Megan wasn’t dead. That could not be. The biggest of questions screamed in my ears. A storm that would not abate.

Why?

The big whys in life are never answered satisfactorily. Why do people do evil things? Because they can. There is no answer beyond that. Not one worth knowing anyway. To seek that answer is to go into the darkness just as the perpetrator has done. But you’ll not find them there. Nor the answers you seek. That darkness is all consuming. All I was told was that Megan’s father had been hurting her for quite some time, and today he went too far. So far that there was no coming back from it. His girlfriend had walked in on them. Too late. Five minutes earlier and things might have been different. Megan might still be here. The narrowest of margins. That’s all it ever takes.

He of course ran. Ran straight into the arms of his mother. Then, when he realised he was unlikely to evade capture, he made a failed attempt at ending his own life. He was able to end Megan’s life, but not his own. Somehow that figures. He still denies any wrong doing. Always will. People like him never take responsibility. Their belief system cannot accommodate consequences. All they do is blame. Imagine that. Imagine being born to parents like that.

I was crushed by the news. Wondered what I could have missed. Replayed all her suffering over and over again in order to understand something that was beyond understanding. Asked myself why she never said anything. How could I not have known? I wept and in my tears I found shame. Deemed them self-pitying. I would not allow myself to heal. That was my gift to myself. There would be worse. I would suffer plenty in the aftermath of Megan’s murder.

The cat was an inexplicable distraction. I couldn’t tell you how it came to be in my home. I remember saying to the police that there should be two. They said they only found one. I had a horrible feeling I knew the fate of the other. I must’ve told them I’d have it. Maybe I wanted some good to come out of all of this. Could be I wanted to prove to myself I could still at least look after a cat. After all, cats are pretty self-sufficient. I’m not sure they need us at all. They indulge us. I think we may be entertainment for them.

In my grief, I suppose I overlooked the symptoms of my allergy to the cat. I overlooked so much during that time. Came to realise I’d overlooked far more during my life with Samantha.

Samantha was… I suppose I would have said difficult. Cold. Aloof. After Megan’s death I put it down to shock. When she blamed me for what had happened to Megan I took it. I wanted that hurt. Needed to feel something. Thought I was helping her express her grief. I became her punchbag. Later I understood that I had always been her punchbag. I was already in the habit of rolling with the punches and picking up the breadcrumbs that I convinced myself were love.

And all the while, whilst I sat in that boiling pan of pain, the cat was there with me. Laying on my lap. Rubbing itself against my legs in a figure of eight so I had to stand still and take a moment. Pause from a life that had become hell and allow myself to feel something else other than pain.

I was trapped. Trapped in a place I thought was home but came to realise was as far from a home as could be. And yet I kept the faith with Samantha. Took everything she threw at me because I needed to be there for her. Felt her pain as well as my own. Wanted to take it from her. I was all she had. She had no one else. There was family and a couple of friends out there somewhere. But in reality there was no one but me.

In the end though, I understood that Samantha was taking from me. Taking what I was not supposed to give. Always had been. The dynamic between us was never healthy. Acknowledging this caused me even more pain. And still I tried. Told her we could not go on like this. I wanted her to be OK, whatever that entailed. But she never once engaged. There was the pretence of engagement. Many false starts. The crashes from the optimism of an improvement broke me more each time. My fall from grace was always injurious. The hell we found ourselves in suited her right up until I said enough was enough and at last meant it.

We were supposed to be taking a break from each other. A timeout to reset. That’s not how it played out. Samantha walked out on me and told everyone we knew that I’d chucked her out. Everyone sided with her of course. She was the victim. I’d failed her and then some. I took that as well. The further injustice of my friends turning on me. I didn’t have the words or the energy to defend myself. I was caught in a terrible limbo of chaos that generated more and more pain.

I should have been lonely then, but I wasn’t. I was freed from the ever present loneliness that had festered in our so called home. I’d been deprived of connection so comprehensively I did not know what to do with myself.

The cat was there. Always there. I was never alone. And now, with Samantha gone, I saw the cat anew. Gave it more of my time and my energy. It had always been my shadow, but now it spent more time in the light of my focus. I’d always thought cats to be wayward and mercenary things. It tickled me that I’d tried with all my heart to love someone who put that myth in the shade.

The cat intrigued me. There was something about its companionship that was special somehow. There was meaning here. Meaning in a place rendered almost meaningless. Perhaps that was what attuned me to the habits and routines of the cat. Made me pay attention to something that actually mattered beyond my own pain and suffering.

Then, one day, I was cleaning Megan’s room. I’d left everything as was. A self-imposed limbo that also spoke of my desperate wish to reconcile with Samantha and see us both healed. A dream that comes true for so few of us. We eschew healing and fail to learn the lessons that pain provides us with. What a silly and selfish species we are. Pretending. Always pretending so we portray something we’re not, in favour of being who we truly are. Adjudging ourselves unworthy before we ever get a shot at this thing we call life.

As I cleaned the room, the cat milled about in the way that cats do. Perusing the landscape and in this case, seemingly making an inventory of the objects in the room. Circling here. Jumping there. Patting a box. Nudging an ornament.

Then time froze as I felt a change in the atmosphere in the room. The temperature dropped, but there was more to it than that. I turned to see what may have caused that change and there the cat was. On the windowsill. A paw placed very deliberately against the back of a snow globe. I uttered one word as I saw the cat’s absolute intent; don’t. Did you know that cats can smile? Of course you did. Everyone knows the Cheshire Cat. The cat grinned at me and then launched the snow globe from the window sill. It broke. It shouldn’t have broken. The fall was cushioned by soft carpet. But sometimes things are meant to be broken and for good reason.

My reaction was anger. Ever tried to be angry at a cat? They are a walking question mark. They beam that anger right back at you but add in some scorn together with a few choice ingredients so you feel like an idiot. Cats are emotional mixologists and they know their business very well.

As my anger dissipated, I felt a strange release. Automatically I muttered a justification for the cats wilful vandalism.

“She never liked that snow globe anyway.”

The cat meowed and jumped over the wreckage and did its figure of eight thing. And that’s when I knew. This was a moment that is seldom gifted to us. We have to see it and we have to embrace it with openness and gratitude or it slips through our fingers and it is never offered to us again. I picked that cheeky rascal up and I lay on Megan’s bed, placing her next to me. And you know what she did? She lay her head upon my heart and comforted me as I cried for everything that was lost and carried on crying until I found everything that was. All the things in life that I was always meant to be grateful for.

That’s when I knew Megan was home and that our hope for better days is never misplaced.