In the chaos of divorce and sharing custody with my two little girls, my ex-husband had a cat, and I thought that by promoting uniformity between the two houses, I should also. The problem was as follows: I didn’t want a cat. I didn’t particularly like cats. My ex did. Although my decision was fed by single -parent shame, his decision was a fact of doing.
For a decade, we were harassed Coparoches from Los Angeles, intertwined by conversations involving camp inscriptions, parents / teacher conferences, pediatric meetings, dividing the weeks of spring vacation and the antidotes of two annoying felines.
My ex’s cat, field, chronically peed on his sofa and spent most of his hours of clarity to hide under a chair. My cat, Seuss, behaved like an imprisoned condemned, trying to escape my apartment. I was continuously part of the walls and making it drag, covered with engine fat, under a car in the morning after slipping the front door to the left.
Whenever he fled, I asked not to have to come back from my research and rescue efforts with a soft body to teach my daughters death. A very small voice in the bottom of my mind began to secretly hope that it would never come back. Through the city of Culver City, my ex could not bring the champion out and consider a large dose of anxiety drugs for his cat.
My animal loyalty has decreased three years. I finished collecting the litter, doing hair in the cart of my clothes and booking costly cat condos when we took a vacation. Field pee in the girls’ backpacks, and Seuss had started to spray to mark the territory. After an “exorcist” type incident, I lost it. I supplied him to the cat carrier and informed the girls he returned to the place of adoption of No-Kill where we had a return policy.
He needs more friends, I told them. I sent a text to my ex: “I return the cat.”
“Then let’s adopt a friend,” begged my eldest daughter. Seuss was silent, feeling his fate.
When I arrived at the WestSide refuge, I sat in the hall with the cat in the carrier, thinking. I desperately wanted to do good as a parent. I didn’t want to be the parent who gave the cat.
“Have you made your decision, madam?” The volunteer asked.
“Give me a minute,” I said, then I called a friend who was an animal lover.
“I can’t do that anymore,” I groan. “I bought it for bad reasons. I don’t need uniformity. I want to go out. “
She told me about my hysteria, and in one way or another, like the cats of the cat, convinced me to honor my commitment. With the cat and the children in the car, I returned my dark way to the house. I sent a text to my ex: “I couldn’t do it.”
For five more years, I accepted the possession of my pet, especially knowing that he was a de facto emotional animal for my 16 -year -old daughter. Despite her asthma, week after week, after her return from her father, she wore Seuss like a fur stolen around her neck.
“I missed it so much,” she said. Her younger sister was died. She refused to be responsible for cat care. “It’s not my cat,” she said.
The men I went out met the cat, and I would solemnly explain that I was not really a cat. “So why do you have a cat?” Asked a guy, while Seuss was sniffing the headdress with suspicion. I asked not to spray.
I moved to a house in the south of Los Angeles, the country of wild cats. Thinking that Seuss would prosperate in a courtyard, he went down to the streets, returning home dirty and tattered. He was eating and then the meow to leave. Lying in the bed at night, I heard the sound of cat cats landing on the roof, their shadows on the fence passing my illuminated window.
Then one day, without ceremonies, my ex gave his cat.
He has a dog.
My daughters gave him no flack, and he didn’t make it a room. When I suggested that I also reconsidant my commitment to the cat when my daughter went to university, she panicked.
“You can’t!” You can give the cat to dad! ” I knew it was a ridiculous suggestion. Why would his father, who became without cat, confront my cat? I was bored. Why could he give the cat, but I was stuck for life? I realized that the closure of this chapter of cat property was going to be more difficult than I thought.
This year, my life has changed. I fell in love, I bought a condo and spent more time at my allergic partner in cats. Seuss was often left alone. An animal should live in a house where they are loved and not barely tolerated. I wanted to approach the subject to give up the cat again.
I called my ex and asked him to support me on my decision. Our relationship was now one of the supports and friendships that can come from the hard tests of the co -parenting, in particular to raise it children in a city where so many parents seem to be better than you.
“You are not happy,” he said. “You can give the cat.”
I called my daughter at university and expressed my intention to make Seuss unless she finds a temporary house until she obtained an apartment.
“I am empty like many parents,” I said, hoping for sympathy.
She was furious. This caused a painful break between us for months. I pleaded that the new phase of my lively life is without pets, and she accused me of abandoning “the family animal of the family”. In my heart, I knew that I could do nothing until it drops a family dynamic once created at the age of 7. The two cats, the two houses, the two parents. I loved him too much to take a step without his approval.
Two months later, when I returned from the university, she seated with me at the kitchen table and announced: “You can give the cat. I get more about my relationship with you.” I expired myself. I was impressed by its maturity and grace. I pleaded for me and she heard my call. Without drama, the cat was returned and read. I hope he did not fled.
The author, a book coach in Los Angeles, wrote the self-assistance book “no longer refuse sexual abuse: make the choices that can change your life”. She writes a weekly chronicle of substitutes entitled igiveyoupermission.substack.com.
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