As a schoolboy I took our cat and her kittens to a village far from home. I have never had a pet since. On how childhood wounds work in adult life.
Back in my school years I found a kitten in the street. It was a girl. I adored her and talked my parents into letting her stay with us.
She slept in a special box in our storage room and wandered peacefully around the flat during the day. She caused no real trouble — only joy and that warmth cats bring.
Time passed and the kitten grew into a cat. She was completely an indoor cat, but when her time came she started jumping out of the window and walking around the little garden under it. We lived on the ground floor back then.
Soon “suitors” showed up, and we got our first 2 kittens. We put out an ad and managed to find them good homes fairly quickly.
Some time later the same thing happened again, only now there were more kittens. My parents said we couldn’t keep that many animals at home and something had to be done.
Drowning kittens is a kind of cruelty I still don’t understand, so even as a schoolboy I never considered that option.
After talking it over with my parents, we decided to take the whole cat family to a village. The honour fell to me, since I was the one who had brought our cat home in the first place.
I remember riding the bus with a bag that kept moving and meowing. The village of Chernianka was 18 km away from us, which made the potential journey home harder for the cat. We knew stories of animals coming back if you didn’t take them far enough.
On that same bus I got talking to a boy who said his sister loved cats and could take them. I got the address and, once I got off the bus, found the right house in the village. I offered to leave the whole “gang” at their place. She happily agreed, though she said she didn’t know how her mother would take the idea when she got home.
I left her some money and walked away. On the bus back, I had tears in my eyes.
By then I had read more than once in “The Little Prince” the words about being responsible for those we have tamed. And even though there is a chance that our cat family had a decent life in that village, I felt like a traitor and never took another animal home again.
This story came back to me in the context of a conversation with Nastya about why I don’t want to get a dog for our home.
It is interesting how our childhood wounds quietly keep working on us in adult life.
Have you had anything like this happen to you? Did you have pets as a child?
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