Dear Aunty Pam,

 

I’m so upset that I can hardly type and I hope you can help. 

I have a 13-year-old cat that means the world to me. He is super affectionate to everyone and was such a comfort to me when my father passed away 10 years ago and my mother, just last year. 

‘Jasper’ is a great cat and very much an indoor cat. Sometimes I will take him to sit with me on our screened-in porch so he can feel the fresh air and sunlight, but we live in the country and there are a lot of coyotes around so I never, ever let him out. My husband knows this and twice in the past, he has let Jasper out by leaving the back door open and both times Jasper got out but luckily, he was still in our yard and I was able to grab him.

Last week my husband was going back and forth to his truck to carry some stuff in and I told him to make sure not to leave the door open. He got kind of defensive and snapped back, “Stop nagging me, I won’t.” Well, you can guess the rest. He did leave the door open and Jasper got out and he’s been gone for days. I am just sick about it. I’ve put flyers up in my neighbors’ mailboxes and signs around town and on FB ‘lost and found’ pages. I fear he’s been killed by a coyote and I’ll never see him again. I can’t stop crying and my husband told me I was overreacting, it’s not like I lost a child, and that Jasper would probably come back.

Right now, I am so angry at my husband that I can’t even look at him. He never even apologized. To be honest, I’d be less upset if it was my husband who disappeared and never came back. Do you think I’m overreacting? I know you’re an animal lover.

 

Signed,

Jasper’s Mom,

 

Dear Mom,

 

I don’t think I like your husband.

I don’t like that he couldn’t bring himself to apologize for being the person responsible for Jasper’s disappearance, or show any sort of remorse or compassion for your loss. I especially don’t like when he equates the loss of a non-existent child to your cat. In Aunty Pam’s view, there is no measuring stick for love. Love is love regardless of whether one is grieving the loss of a beloved child, parent, cat or parakeet. And everyone knows grief is love with no place to go. 

I’m not going to remark on your comment about missing your cat more than, hypothetically, your hubs, because I can feel several of my readers nodding their heads in agreement as they assess the state of their own marriage…but I will tell you that while babysitting my mother’s cat while she was in hospital, I opened my front door to go out and the cat shot out from under the sofa, between my legs, and out the door. Well, you can imagine. There wasn’t enough prosecco to calm Aunty Pam’s heart but believe it or not, even in the coyote-infested woodland that surrounds our house, I FOUND THAT CAT three months later in a church cemetery that I happened to be driving past—just a couple of miles from my house. She’d survived on bugs and mice, was very thin, and very grateful to be caught. So please don’t give up hope for Jasper’s return. Ask neighbors to look under their front steps, decks—any dark place a scaredy cat might hide. Look up at the tops of trees. And leave strong flavored (tuna) food out that he could smell. Best of luck. 

Come home, Jasper!!

 

Cheers, dear!!

Aunty Pam