This is why I stay in relationships so long: I make commitments based on what other people offer or strongarm me into accepting. Then I honor those commitments long past the point that is reasonable. I agonize over taking the steps I need to take to resolve the situation – because you know, this last, other thing I haven’t tried yet – that might fix it. And while I’m busy with that, I lose any momentum I might briefly have had to actually resolve the situation in a way that might make me happy.

Is it wrong to be selfish when there is a life at stake?

Is it selfish to say, I want to be happy, and not only do you not make me happy, you contribute to my unhappiness?

Doesn’t everybody deserve love?

If we give love, and show it through our actions and efforts, is it selfish to say we deserve to be loved in return?

Just a little?

Eventually, The Black Cat died of old age. The Striped Cat didn’t get any friendlier, but some of the really egregious behavior stopped.

The Child started begging for a kitten.

The Departed said No More Pets.

Then The Departed left and refused to pay the mortgage or cooperate with the divorce process in any way – except, of course, to demand that I deliver one item of his choosing daily within 24 hours of him deciding he needed it, and by the way, he’d be needing alimony to supplement his income.

At right about that time, I got an email from the Humane Society that said they had a very large quantity of kittens and adoption fees were reduced.

We got a sweet little Siamese boy.

The Child was ecstatic, and named him, and chose toys for him, and carried him around the house perched on her shoulder as though she was a pirate and he was her parrot.

He slept in my bedroom at first, because that’s where she slept after He left. Then she decided that with The Siamese to keep her company, she could move back into her own room. She didn’t want to hurt my feelings, she said, but she and The Siamese “need our space.”

I refrained from saying “me too,” and just smiled at this longed-for turn of events.

Striped, though, was furious at this turn of events, and let everyone know it. She attacked The Siamese whenever she saw him; he quickly learned what his escape routes were and that my lap was a safe place. She peed on everything. Constantly.

I read all the suggestions on the internet and spoke to the Vet repeatedly. I got Striped a collar with pheromones in it that were supposed to mellow her out. She did become sweeter, except when she was peeing on the furniture or she saw The Siamese. She vomited constantly and began to lose weight.

I took her to the vet, who thought she might have cancer.

I scheduled an appointment – that last appointment. You know the one I mean.

I put her in my bedroom, which has a large master bath – plenty of space for her all on her own. I resolved to make her last few days happy and peaceful.

After a couple of days of crying, I realized she had stopped vomiting. The Vet thought perhaps it was just anxiety related to The Siamese. She suggested medication for that. I considered it and decide to just see how Striped did having her own domain.

The appointment was canceled.

She seemed to do okay at first. Maybe it was just the fact that I no longer had to clean up cat vomit daily that made it seem that way.

I started noticing wet spots on my bed. Often, I didn’t discover them until the wee hours of the night, when I’d roll over in my sleep and suddenly feel a clammy dampness. I’m not getting a lot of sleep as it is, and this is obviously not helping.

One night, I put clean sheets on the bed right when I went to sleep. Clean and dry. I went to sleep, with Striped on the pillow next to mine.

At 3am, my feet moved into a spot that was soaking wet.

She was peeing in my bed while I was sleeping in it.

The Striped Cat and The Black Cat promptly turned up their noses at each other. They did not actually fight; mostly, they just ignored each other. It was disappointing, but  not really a problem.

The Black Cat got older, and more passive, and frail. He needed medication. At first, I put the medication in his food, but then I discovered Striped was eating it. It seemed she was eating all his food, so I started letting him eat first, behind a closed door. He was getting very thin and she was, frankly, porky – so she got to wait.

She waited quite a while he was old and a really, really slow eater.

That gave her plenty of time to express her displeasure. Typically, she would pee on the sofa or something similar. On one occasion, she left a big steaming pile of crap on the sofa. I could smell the reek from upstairs when I came down from my shower. The Departed had walked right by it and not even noticed.
Or so he said. I pointed it out to him and he said, “oh.”

I finally solved that problem by simply feeding the two in different rooms, but at the same time – but there were other problems. She chewed apart all sorts of things, but one of her biggest targets was the type of tulle out of which they make fancy doll clothes and little girl dress up clothes, not to mention those expensive fancy dresses that little girls wear one time for pictures or parties while their mothers follow them around imploring them not to stain it.

Striped would sit on the back of the sofa in the evenings, but no one was allowed to pet her: She would bite.

This was all not really working for me, so I contacted a rescue agency and was told in a judgmental tone: We don’t take declawed cats.

I placed a classified ad on Petfinder and found out that many Nigerians long to have such precious cats as this one and would like to arrange to have her shipped around the world.

I gave up. I coped.