A Mother’s Day vignette

The woman living next door to us loves her cats. I don’t mean this in a healthy beloved pet sort of way. I mean she is the type who dresses the cats up before company comes over, asks their opinions before any major family decisions are made, and probably has opened a trust in the cats’ names just in case they need to pay someone to clean the turds out of their kitty litter were she to die.

Periodically, her cats get out of the house. Surprisingly, they tend to wander off when this happens. It’s almost as if they are just animals without a deep consideration and love for the feelings of their family. At any rate, when this happens, she freaks out. I mean completely loses it – a la a Howard Dean rally speech. She screeches and screams, pulls at her hair, rends her clothes, puts on a sack cloth, and self-flagellates for a few minutes; the usual signs of healthy anxiety. We were sort of shocked by it the first time we saw it. However, today’s performance was one of her most moving.

It started with a stifled moan and then a scream. We looked outside and she was walking down the middle of the street with a clump of her hair in each hand and a look of sheer panic on her face. She screamed the cat’s name, and looked hopelessly around the street and her yard. She then put her hands on her cheeks and pulled, looking for all her might like an Edvard Munch painting. She screamed again and continued to walk around in fits of anxiety. Then she walked up to her bewildered husband who had appeared at the doorway and said, “If she [the cat] is gone! … If she [again, this is a cat we’re talking about] is gone, … I want you to keep my mother away from me. I never want to see that woman again!.”

Presumably her mother let the cat out. It warms the heart… particularly on Mother’s Day!