My Cat Died and So Did My Marriage

This is a true story.

Today was a metaphor for a sad country song. I asked my husband to move out. I felt a primal need to defend happiness and peace in my soul. It really felt as though my happiness and peace were being ripped apart by a pack of wolves on a daily basis. I was watching it happen, overpowered by the sheer strength of the unhappy marriage situation that kept me from my soul’s journey, like a pair of shackles underwater.

For months, I have felt a deep burning inside that was much like a churn, but also if that churn was on fire.  I pushed that fire down until today, optimistically hoping the feelings would subside as they always do in this cyclical 1-2 year funfest of ours, or that maybe magically all of the things I have said 7,495 times would sink into his hard-ass head…. but alas, here we are. No amount of therapy or anxiety prescriptions seem to quiet the internal yearn this time.

The weekly therapy does help me put my thoughts into perspective and organize the root of my lifelong PTSD, but it also reminds me that over the last 19 years, maybe he actually isn’t the one who has changed, I am.  I watched a Steve Harvey video today where he said something I found somewhat profound, “you don’t need a collection of red flags, one is enough” or something like that. Somewhat enlightened after hearing that, I look back and all red flags were right there, just showing up as brighter shades of red in the rear-view mirror.

Back to today’s metaphor. If I were a man that lost his truck, his wife and his dog today, this day could be the verses of a bad-ass, sad-ass country song. But I’m not. I’m a strong independent woman SICK AND TIRED OF second-guessing her self-worth based on the observations and extreme righteousness of a man with an armor coated cloak of oblivion that is not of this world, all forced to hasten the descension of my testicles at warp speed and demand myself to love myself as much as I do those closest in my world. Also, it wasn’t really a metaphor for today.

The verses of the song speak of how we have the conversation. We walk inside the house, my face has swollen itself to itself at this point and I need to clean myself up because his parents said they were in town and on their way over right now. I am not allowed to discuss this with them while they are here for the next 4 weeks (what?!)!

Just as I was taking my newly descended testicles for a spin down the hallway to wash up, I heard the cat once again taunting, hissing and spitting at the dog. I assumed it was from behind a closed door and usually the door stops evil from getting herself munched. As I turned to look, she was not behind the door, she was under the bathroom counter, 81 pounds of Belgian Malinois that she has been double-dog daring to eat her for 4 months now staring into her soon-to-be-departed soul.  I tried to save her. I tried to get him away from her but the Dutch Shepherd and second Belgian were already there with him, also snout-first into death town. I screamed for my husband at the top of my lungs. I screamed for my son, I screamed for what I felt inside at that very moment (which was powerless, helpless, traumatized and primal)… just like what was happening simultaneously in my soul, my marriage and also right in front of me.

My dogs literally attacked and killed our cat in front of me and all I could do was scream. I thought they were going to rip her tiny body to pieces. They didn’t, but our dog literally clamped his jaw on her so tight that it crushed her organs and mortally wounded her. It was a deeply primal pack response to a cat I lovingly referred to as the White Devil.

She was the cutest, softest, cuddliest cotton ball, part Siamese, cross-eyed cat. But she was an asshole to dogs. She taunted them, hissed at them, spit at them and started shit on a regular basis. Before I had her front claws removed, she would torment the dogs, then scratch their eyes out until they were bleeding. To humans, she was definitely a trick. Super cute. Until a dog came anywhere near her, even if it was minding its own dog-business.

I both loved and hated that cat. I tried to save her, he tried to save her, we all tried to save her but her need to be White Devil to the dog ultimately ended in what we call natural selection and her meeting her kitty-cat maker sooner than expected, leaving us all traumatized by dogs silencing her, as any pack would.

As I took my other cat to my Grandma’s house today to remove any possibility that she too could suffer the same terrible fate, I felt a plethora of emotions, more than the obvious ones such as irritated about my tear ducts being parched and sad about the trauma, adrenaline and don’t forget the nausea that hit me along with the hyperventilating immediately after we freed the cat from the jaws of death. I’m talking about deep canyon-sized type emotions – I realized that it was ironic we had this emotional, pivotal end of our marriage. I knew clear as day that when he made me say it so that he didn’t have to, it was over and IMMEDIATELY after our conversation, the dogs kill the cat. I realized that the scene that took place in my home today with the animals was very representative of how I feel inside, primal. Let’s just say that I still smell the cat’s urine on the dogs, not even hypothetically, they reek, but I’m too emotionally and physically exhausted to do anything about it except move my fingers to type about how my cat died and so did my marriage.