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About 18 years ago, my family got a kitten. Ironically enough, it was mostly my idea.
I look back on it as one of the worst mistakes I ever made.
The kitten came from the house of a poor lonely Sacramento woman who took in cats as a hobby; she had about 25 cats. This particular kitten was the runt of the litter. The first time we saw it, it glanced at us then dove under a sofa. When we took it home, it kept searching under the furniture in our house, meowing, looking for the other cats.
Corroborating what we knew from the woman about its lineage, its appearance and behavior were obviously half tabby, quarter Abyssinian, quarter Siamese. It had the characteristic ruggedness of a tabby, the triangular ears, lean build, brown undertones and painful shyness of a Abyssinian, and of course the extremely intelligent, verbal and neurotic behavior of a Siamese.
The cat proved a good match for the family. It would engage in characteristic Siamese behaviors like trilling whenever it saw something happen, meowing frantically whenever it was about to be gratified in some way (then acting jaded after being so), e.g.,
-running to the bathroom adjacent to the carport and meowing loudly as we drove up, running to the front door when it heard the lock turn, then flashing a "oh it's YOU people again" look and walking off
-meowing frantically when its food was about to be delivered, then morbidly taking a half-bite and walking off
-attempting to stalk us as we walked to the store, clumsily hiding behind cable boxes and peeking out
-sitting at one of the unused seats at the dinner table, facing the table and meowing, expecting to be fed at the table (this was a very hard behavior to break and I still remember the disgruntled look on the cat's face)
-banging the screen door open with its head then jamming the screen door open with the doormat, attempting to convince us to stop closing the door after it walked through it - interestingly, the cat was never actually witnessed dragging the doormat into the door
-eating leftover chocolate chip waffles with real maple syrup and drinking hot chocolate from the table, just to try to be part of the family (unlike dogs, cats are physically unable to detect sweetness, and sweet food is not pleasurable for them)
-sitting and literally watching TV with the family, staring at it as we did (again, unlike dogs, cats cannot comprehend television images because the refresh rate and range of color do not appear fluid to their perception)
-acquiring a white tiger kitten doll that was one of a few gifts given to me by my actual mother (not the woman who insists that she is despite mounting evidence to the contrary), carrying it around in its mouth and putting it under furniture; this behavior continued long after the cat was spayed
About three years after we got the cat, my father's parents died.
My father was the victim of severe overparenting and never really grew up. His entire life, he has worked in either private practice, or in government bureaucracy, and therefore he has no real understanding of what the world is actually like. When he tries to convince someone to do something, he either engages in pitiful supplication or blustering and silly legalistic arguments.
He has the incredibly disgusting (and also very foul-smelling) habit of gnawing on paper towels and his sleeves, then just putting the paper towel down when he's done chewing on it. He also would drink half a water bottle then just put the water bottle down. The last time my paternal grandmother came to visit, she declared this disgusting and literally refused to leave until we bought a water cooler. She perseverated on the topic precisely because she was very aware that it was ultimately her fault for hiring a maid which my father was not even aware existed until he was in his 20s.
He spends way too much of his time sitting in front of a large fan, staring into space. When his parents passed away, this behavior became even more frequent and pronounced. He idolized his father and thinks the man could do no wrong. In reality, my paternal grandfather was a man of remarkable intelligence and strength of character - a real "greatest generation type" - but his greatest strength was a certain boldness and tactful perseverance that my father never understood, much less appreciated.
My father identified with Michael Corleone from The Godfather. When we watched the scene where Michael asks Tessio in kind of a diffident, rhetorical way whether he had betrayed the family or not - hoping to put himself at ease by hearing the man say what he already knew to be true - my father, who had actually read the book, pointed out, in a tone of voice that really angered me, "In the book, he thinks, that was when he knew he would never be as good as the old man. His old man would have had the confidence to not need to hear him say it himself." He also liked Godfather II for the same reason, the flashbacks that contrasted how father and son behaved in similar situations.
He also liked a theme of the two movies I found extremely offensive, which was how Michael Corleone reigned over the general decline of the Family, and did what he could to fight rear-guard actions without support from those around him. I hated the diffident and self-content mentality - as if we're all so delighted to be consigned to mediocrity, just a rationalization for not caring. His parents may live on after he dies, at least in his mind, but I have no delusions.
I think he identified me with Michael's own heir - something of a self-fulfilling prophecy - a real son of a bitch (literally; both of illegitimate birth - never having a mother's love makes a certain kind of man), a cold, intelligent young man with the heart of a killer.
The perception is an accurate one, but it angers me that he doesn't understand his own role in shaping my personality, or how I like his father understand certain things that he doesn't, amongst them that life is not fair and that *real people* are not most driven by considerations of right and wrong.
My father had a cat when he was a boy. Coming home from school, a dog had chased a cat up a telephone pole. He drove the dog off with a stick, climbed the pole, and took down the cat. He asked his father if he could keep it. His father replied they would give it some milk and let it go, and if it was back in the morning, they'd keep it. That cat became the family pet for 18 years. The cat was described by everyone who knew it as a cruel monster that delighted in hiding on top of the refrigerator and terrorizing the youngest son of the family by jumping on his hair as he walked by.
I hated this anecdote too, because in reality, my own father was intensely neurotic and risk-averse, and neither he nor the mother of my half-brother were ever so energetic with anything so much as telling me what couldn't be done and discouraging me from trying things. I know that if he was in his father's shoes and I was in his, he'd start bitching at me about how the cat probably has rabies, or I'd break my neck climbing the pole, or, worst of all, "we'll have to think about it", or some bullshit like that. In effect, I very strongly felt that he had cheated me out of the life experiences he himself most prized.
Those who have dealt with me in-game know well that I'm usually a fairly calm and self-assured person - how I go absolutely berserk when second-guessed...when people try to tell me what can and can't be done. This is the true reason why.
My father lavished time and empathy on our new cat, often having rhetorical, Blofeld-like dialogues with it, referring to it as "the only one who really understands". I was initially warm to the cat, but became increasingly distant and jaded towards it as it became the focal point of my father's attentions, and my father started outsourcing the work of parenting to other people, increasingly simply refusing to listen to, much less care about, my day-to-day problems.
It was also during this time that his vision began to degenerate. He had to give up driving and the practice of medicine, and it seemed that as his field of eyesight narrowed, so too did his field of vision. He became increasingly inward-looking and disinterested in everyone else's problems. This angered me because I felt I deserved his support in pursuit of my life goals, and instead his energy and empathy were frittered away on that damned furball.
I am too logical and willful to take out my anger on people who don't deserve it, and I was always civil if aloof to the cat, but I came to hate the thing and many times seriously considered hurling it into the nearby American River.
A part of me truly regrets I didn't. I think if I had my life to live again, I'd do it.
My father never really got over the death of his parents. I had one of my shallow, futile little conversations with him a few weeks back, and pointed out, "Bernard [I've taken to referring to him by name to sound more unemotional and objective] would not do what you are doing". My father's response was, "Yes he does." Present tense. The man has been dead for nearly a decade. He still has imaginary dialogues with him.
During this same conversation, my father mentioned, tearfully, that the cat had been put down due to developing esophageal cancer that prevented it from eating. I made it clear I completely didn't care, and we kept going back and forth using different pronouns to refer to the thing. he fact that this came as a total, incomprehensible surprise to him angered me even more.
A week ago, I called him again to give an update on an issue (which in that same previous conversation, he had given a negative appraisal of) to inform him of a positive outcome, one that he had assured me was quite impossible. Not surprisingly, he completely didn't remember what had been said about anything but the damn cat, even after having been reminded, nor that he had gone on and on about how a positive outcome was impossible. I insulted him and hung up.
...So, uh, yeah, that's my recollections about the death of the family cat.
Aestu of Bleeding Hollow... Nihilism is a copout.
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