The Cat

Yesterday my 13 year old male tabby cat, who I left behind with my ex, died.  He was the world's sweetest cat.  My ex and I got him the year after we married, and he was our first baby (I always liked my ex for being a cat person).  Whenever I was alone and distraught, the cat would snuggle up to me and make me feel better.  I really believe that he knew when I needed the comfort.  It was torture to leave him behind when I moved out, but it felt like the right thing to do, both for the cat and my ex.  I have really missed him.  I always used my trips to my ex's to pick up or drop off the kids as a chance for kitty visitation, and he always ran to meet me to be petted and to shed fur on my clothes.

Earlier in the week, the cat started wheezing, and we thought maybe it was asthma or something treatable.  Turns out it was terminal cancer.  My ex was with the cat when he was euthanized, which I'm very glad about.  I'm glad that the cat had someone he loved, and who loved him, to see him through his last moments.  I had done the same with our other cat, also much beloved, a few years ago, and it was emotionally brutal.  I had a lot of empathy for my ex.

Tonight my ex and I sat down with the kids to explain it to them, which went about as well as could be expected under the circumstances.  I had brought a 3-ring binder, paper, crayons, and some photos of the cat.  We explained what had happened, hugged them, read them some books (Mr. Rogers could explain anything to a kid, I'm convinced), looked at pictures of the cat and talked about him, and encouraged the kids to draw pictures and write about how they felt.  We did a lot of hugging and crying.  I think we handled it the right way.  In the night, my son woke up and was upset about the cat.  He was at his dad's, and I'm glad the his dad did what I would have done:  curled up with him, stroked his hair, reassured him, and stayed with him until he fell back asleep.  This is the kind of thing I focus on when my ex annoys me.  He loves our children.

The cat represents more than just a cat, of course.  He was one of the symbols of our early marriage, how I felt in those days, one of our first cooperative projects.  I loved that my ex loved the cat, that he would sleep with us, and that sometimes I would wake up to see that cat, lying on his back with his head between ours on the pillows.  A lot of people "get over" their pets when their children are born, and though certainly the children were always the first priority, we never stopped loving the cat.

It is hard to let go.  My heart really goes out to my ex at this time, and I am glad to hear that he plans to adopt another pair of cats, who the children will get to pick and name, in a couple of months.  I'm proud that we were able to be there for our children and help them navigate through this.  It gives me hope that we can continue to cooperate and support each other.

Truth

I am a horrible liar.  Absolutely the worst.  I have all the tells - giving too much detail and then contradicting myself, fidgeting, stammering, looking into the upper corners of my field of vision, inability to answer simple questions.  It's a good thing I don't play poker.  How I ever got away with the enormity and duration of the lie I perpetrated is completely beyond me.

And that worries me.  I don't want to be a good liar.  I don't want to be a liar at all.  It is a bad habit, one that quickly gets easier with practice.  We've all known people who actually lose track of what is actually true vs. what they made up or want to believe.  That is not the person I want to be.  These are not the values I want to teach my children.

DB and I have been talking about this a lot lately.  He also feels haunted by this loss of integrity, not because of anyone else's opinion of what he has done, but because of his own opinion of himself. We are also hyper-aware that if we cannot be absolutely honest with each other, we will not last.  Truth is vital.

In my religious tradition (Reform Judaism), people are deemed to have a "good impulse" and a "bad impulse," and we always have a choice about which impulse to follow.  The more frequently you do good things, the easier it becomes to do more good things, and that is why we view someone as a "good" person.  It's not that the person has no negative thoughts or desires and never does anything wrong, but rather that he or she is good at recognizing and choosing the higher road most of the time.  The opposite is also true, so when we do bad things, repeatedly, it becomes harder to resist the parts of ourselves that are selfish and petty and greedy and lazy.  The good news is that we can always turn it around, but it takes work.

I want to turn it around.  I am making a conscious effort every day to be honest, to take responsibility for what I say and rebuild my integrity.  Every time I find myself tempted to "spin" the truth, I stop and ask myself why.  Of course, diplomacy and tact are still important, but never at the expense of trust and integrity.

If you're considering having an affair, or involved in an affair, I encourage you to ask yourself whether this is the kind of person you want to be.  Eventually, if you lie enough, you become a liar.  It's hard to come back from that, and painful and ugly to confront.  A little honesty now could save you a lot of trouble down the road.  That's the truth.