Any pet lover will tell you the same thing – the furry (or scaly, or whatever) ones are just as much members of their family as the furless bipeds. I am a cat person, and I have always referred to my cats as my babies. When I was pregnant I even had a dream that interpreted that literally, as I was strapping my eldest cat into a baby seat in the car.
Once my son was born, though, I realized that there is a line to be drawn. Twice in the fourteen months since his birth, my husband and I have had to make the impossible choice between two members of our family. Once was over the summer, when we had to rehome one of our cats due to his unsanitary tracking habits. The other was yesterday. The following is excerpted from my personal journal:
He hid under the dining room table and hissed. And growled. At everyone. Including us. So we decided it best to shut him upstairs, where he would be able to relax, and wouldn’t scare (or God forbid) hurt anyone. (Note: before tonight, he’s never actually attacked anyone unless he was absolutely cornered, and even then it’s been rare.) So O took him upstairs, growling, hissing, etc. And he just … freaked out. O got him past the baby gate, and he broke free and barreled into the gate, knocking it down. I’m a little fuzzy on everything that happened from there, but it took at least 45 minutes… and O got attacked. As in, his hand has a ton of puncture wounds and scratches, despite having Sage wrapped in a blanket (because that was the ONLY way he could get hold of him – he tried for a LONG time before that).
Eventually Sage got closed upstairs (on the third floor), and M helped clean O up and bandage his hand. And we made the most difficult decision we’ve ever had to make as cat-owners. We had to call animal control.
The fact of the matter is, as much as we love Sage, he was a danger to us, to our friends and their children, and to Buggie. This was not the first time he had reacted that way, but it was certainly a stronger reaction than we had seen in the past. We simply could not risk it happening again.
However, Sage was my baby. O and I have had him since a month after we started dating, and he’s been a constant companion for all these years. I am nothing short of heartbroken at having lost him, and have spent the past 27 hours questioning what I could possibly have done differently over the past eight years, to have achieved a different outcome. Obviously, though, there is no way for me to know the answer to that question. Was it because of his unstable kittenhood and the multiple moves we had to make when he was small? Did someone hurt him when I was not there to see or to stop it? Or was this going to happen no matter what, and only the specific place and time uncertain?
There are countless unanswerable questions in my head, mingling with the guilt and sadness I feel. I know O and I made the best decision we could for our family. Our responsibility as parents dictated that the line be drawn to ensure our son’s safety. Does this change my definition of the word “family” to exclude the feline persuasion? No, I think that if it did, the decision would not have been so difficult, and my heart would not be so heavy.
Buggie petting Sage
