L.A. Affairs: For years, I juggled co-parenting, dating and taking care of a family cat I didn't like

Los Angeles Times

3 days ago

In the chaos of divorce and shared custody with my two little girls, my ex-husband got a cat, and I thought by promoting uniformity between the two homes, I should too. The problem was this: I didn't want a cat. I didn't particularly like cats. My ex did. Although my decision was fueled by single-parent shame, his decision was matter-of-fact.
For a decade, we were harried Los Angeles co-parents, entwined by conversations involving camp sign-ups, parent/teacher conferences, pediatrician appointments, dividing spring break weeks and the antidotes of two troublesome felines.
My ex's cat, Champ, chronically peed on his couch and spent most of its daylight hours hiding under a chair. My cat, Seuss, behaved like a jailed convict, seeking any opportunity for escape from my apartment. I was continually scaling walls and dragging him, covered in engine grease, out from under a car in the morning after he slipped out the front door left ajar.
Each time he ran away, I prayed I wouldn't have to return from my search-and-rescue efforts with a limp body to teach my girls about death. A very small voice in the back of my mind began to secretly hope he'd never return. Across town in Culver City, my ex couldn't get Champ to go outside at all and was considering a hefty dose of anxiety meds for his cat.
My pet loyalty waned three years in. I was done scooping the litter, lint-rolling hair from my clothes and booking expensive cat condos when we took holidays. Champ was peeing in the girls' backpacks, and Seuss had started spraying to mark territory. After one 'Exorcist'-like incident, I lost it. I stuffed him in the cat carrier and informed the girls he was going back to the no-kill adoption place where we had a lifetime return policy.
He needs more friends, I told them. I texted my ex: 'I'm returning the cat.'
'Then let's adopt him a friend,' my older daughter begged on the ride. Seuss was silent, sensing his fate.
Upon arrival at the shelter on the Westside, I sat in the lobby with the cat in the carrier, thinking. I desperately wanted to do good as a parent. I didn't want to be the parent who gave the cat away.
'Have you made your decision, ma'am?' the volunteer asked.
'Give me a minute,' I said, and then I called a friend who was a pet lover.
'I can't do this anymore,' I wailed. 'I bought him for the wrong reasons. I don't need uniformity. I want out.'
She talked me down from my hysteria, and somehow, like cat people can, convinced me to honor my commitment. With the cat and kids in the car, I made my somber way home. I texted my ex: 'I couldn't do it.'
For five more years, I accepted my pet ownership, especially knowing he was a de facto emotional support animal for my now-16-year-old daughter. Despite her asthma, week upon week, after her return from her dad's, she would wear Seuss like a fur stole around her neck.
'I missed him so much,' she'd say. Her younger sister was nonplussed. She refused to be responsible for cat care. 'It's not my cat,' she said.
Men I dated would meet the cat, and I would solemnly explain I wasn't really a cat person. 'Then why do you have a cat?' one guy asked, as Seuss sniffed his pant cuff suspiciously. I prayed he wouldn't spray.
I moved to a house in South L.A., the land of feral cats. Thinking Seuss would thrive in a yard, he took to the streets, returning home filthy and ragged. He would eat and then meow to leave. Lying in bed at night, I would hear the thump of the neighborhood cats landing on the roof, their shadows on the fence passing my illuminated windowpane.
Then one day, without ceremony, my ex gave his cat away.
He got a dog.
My daughters didn't give him any flack, and he didn't make room for it. When I suggested I too was reconsidering my commitment to the cat when my daughter went to college, she freaked out.
'You can't! You can give the cat to dad!' I knew that was a ridiculous suggestion. Why would her dad, who just became cat-free, take on my cat? I was annoyed. Why did he get to give the cat away, but I was stuck for life? I realized closing this chapter of cat ownership was going to be more challenging than I thought.
Within that year, my life changed. I fell in love, bought a condo and was spending more time at the house of my partner who was allergic to cats. Seuss was often left alone. A pet should live in a home where they're loved and not barely tolerated. I wanted to broach the subject of giving up the cat again.
I called my ex and asked him to back me on my decision. Our relationship was now one of the support and friendship that can come from the hard trials of co-parenting, especially raising children in a city where so many parents look like they are doing it better than you.
'You aren't happy,' he said. 'You get to give away the cat.'
I called my daughter at college and expressed my intentions to give Seuss away unless she could find him a temporary home until she got an apartment.
'I'm empty-nesting like many parents,' I said, hoping for sympathy.
She was furious. It caused a painful rift between us for months. I advocated for the new phase of my mid-life to be pet-free, and she accused me of abandoning 'the family pet.' In my heart, I knew I couldn't do anything until she let go of a family dynamic once created when she was 7. The two cats, the two homes, the two parents. I loved her too much to make a move without her approval.
Two months later, on a return from college, she sat with me at the kitchen table and announced: 'You can give the cat away. I care about my relationship with you more.' I exhaled. I was awed by her maturity and grace. I advocated for myself, and she heard my appeal. Drama-free, the cat was returned and readopted. Hopefully he has not run away.
The author, a book coach in Los Angeles, wrote the self-help book 'No Longer Denying Sexual Abuse: Making the Choices That Can Change Your Life.' She writes a weekly Substack column called Give Yourself Permission at igiveyoupermission.substack.com.
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