A little over a week since they left and we are still feeling the after-effects. We’ve since cleaned out all the shit frozen stuff they left in our fridge and we have possession of all our Pyrex and Rubbermaid containers again.

Tonight we are hosting my cousins from Taiwan for dinner and I wanted to use this particular dinnerware set of (what used to be) four, perfect with the main course plate, the bread and butter platters, soup bowls, and dessert dishes. Now there are only three bread and butter platters and three soup bowls. One of the dessert dishes is chipped. This DRIVES ME CRAZY. I just don’t get how we can manage to keep the set a full set for five years and they come along and each time they visit, BREAK SOMETHING.

We had to haul out several new pots and pans (we have a bunch in reserve) because MIL ruined some of my best Calaphon pans. She uses metal spatulas to stir-fry IN NON-STICK PANS. I remember several months ago when I witnessed it. My eyes nearly fell out of their sockets bulging out so hard and Hubby had to grab me, pull me up the stairs, and say a bunch of sweet nothings to me like don’t worry, I’ll get an entire brand new set, any brand you like, any set you like, full retail, we won’t even wait for a discount.

The den is stuffed with stolen hospital supplies. If it wasn’t so ludicrous and under my roof, this would be funny actually. Every time she visits the hospital or dialysis clinic, MIL and FIL stuff their handbags with hospital supplies. They use the disposable gloves for gardening, hospital smocks as cooking aprons and leave out the padding things everywhere, to wipe the countertops, wipe the floors (along with the scrap pieces of underwear), and I don’t even know what else. Oh– we now have rolls and rolls of gauze in our medicine cabinet. That’s kind of a bonus, I think. I believe there are even head caps that they use as shower caps, because I found a bunch of disposable head caps in their bathroom.

Perhaps the part that bothers me the most is how I’m so sure she leaves thinking she was super helpful to us, having cooked for us every single day so that I didn’t have to lift a finger in the kitchen during the whole three and a half months they were here. She must believe she was doing us a favor.

In reality, I couldn’t have hated it more. The only reason we let her take over the kitchen is because we didn’t have any other choice. When she and I tried to share a kitchen, the rate of onsetting insanity was just too fast to keep up with how long they’d be staying. I had more outbursts. I’d tolerate, tolerate, and then every few days, something would snap and I’d throw open both fridge and freezer door and just start dumping out all their man tou, noodles, buns, dumplings, and everything else that they’d been keeping in our containers. I’d just start throwing out her spices and hiding her pill bottles and then Hubby would have to think frantically for excuses or “explanations” to give his parents to explain all the missing shit. About a month in of the outbursts, when I started leaving out slippery towels all over the floor and removing the non-slip pad underneath all throw rugs so they were slippy so MAYBE that fucking MIL would slip and fall to her demise, Hubby said enough was enough. I agreed.

So the solution, if you can even call it that, was for me to stay out of the kitchen. Completely. The only time I stepped foot in the kitchen area was to make coffee in the morning, grab my coffee, and bolt back up the stairs. And I made sure to do that at 6 in the morning before anyone was up.

The ant problem. Christ. I saw it coming. When Hubs and I first moved in, we had a very minor ant problem and realized quickly, as new homeowners, that the kitchen really needed to be wiped down clean, with no trace of food or crumbs, and if at any time you wanted to leave food out, they had to be covered. Plainly speaking, we rarely left food out that wasn’t fully sealed. MIL and FIL like to leave out cut fruit in bowls and these cut fruit in bowls just stay on the kitchen counter for days. DAYS, yes. It’s so odd. They let a bunch of persimmons and figs rot to hell on the kitchen counter and you could see sweet juices oozing out. They cook food and then leave out all the cooked food on the table and counter, uncovered, because they don’t want to waste plastic wrap. The result? After that bout of rain, a horrific army of ants raided the kitchen and FIL and Hubby had to scramble to deal with it. And MIL, so fake-innocently, was all like, “Oh, you think the food we left out attracted them in?”

I still get beyond emotional when I think about Kitty. They had already been here for two months by the time we were getting ready to leave for Europe, and had worn me down so thin I didn’t have the mind to think about what a STUPID idea it would be to leave my precious little baby under their care. Whatever they did or didn’t do, the end result is my cat starved to death, was dehydrated, constipated, and the starvation and pre-existing obesity caused many of his organs to shut down and we caught the thrombosis in his legs way, WAY too late. Had the in-laws BOTHERED TO MENTION TO US that they started noticing that Kitty WASN’T WALKING ANYMORE and therefore also NOT EATING ANYMORE because he wasn’t visiting his food station, we might have been able to do something, like get a friend to rush over, sweep in and save Kitty, take him to the vet, and maybe catch the thrombosis in time. Do I blame his parents? Hell fucking yes. But yes, as much as I blame myself. There is plenty of blame to go all around. But they are certainly in the loop of guilt. And it boils my blood EVERY time Hubby has the audacity to say it wasn’t his parents’ fault or try to imply that I’m being unreasonable for blaming them because “there is no way they could have known better.”

Hubby has promised that his parents won’t visit in 2016 and I intend to see him keep his word.

 

Finally.

They left on Sunday. We’ve been spending every day this week cleaning up after them and– from my end at least– erasing all evidence they were even here, or trying to.

Saturday was Hubby’s and my seventh year anniversary. He surprised me with roses on the morning of, but that was the extent of our celebration. We couldn’t go anywhere, since it would be his parents’ last day with him, and they really wanted to spend every second with their boy. His mom cooked us lunch. Typical lunch. We did take-out from my favorite restaurant for dinner but ate at home, with his parents. All remaining time on Saturday was spent playing mah jong.

That’s right. Mah jong. For his parents. Before anyone yells at them, I consented. I said it was fine. Hubby asked me many times if I was sure. I relented and said yeah, it’s fine. Later when he smiled at me and said “Thank you,” I didn’t even do the typical girly “don’t mention it” or “it’s not a problem” or “my pleasure.” I said, “You’re welcome.” And left it at that.

His parents knew it was our seventh year anniversary. They even commented on how fast seven years of marriage has flown by. To make light dinner conversation (or so I thought), I asked them how they got to meet and fall in love (the MIL and FIL).

“You know the story already. I told it to you before,” said MIL flatly.

She did, sort of. She told me FIL was introduced to her through her father’s co-worker, whose son was friends with FIL, and MIL’s father invited FIL over to their house to see if the two might get along. Then they got married.

That’s not really a story, at least not the way my own mother might tell the story of how she and my father met, for instance.

If you ask my mom how she and my father met and fell in love, get ready to clear your schedule and sit for an hour. She’ll go off on interesting tangents, circle back to the main narration, mention lots of random but tender, sentimental details, insert her own opinions and judgments, go nonlinear for a while and jump between timelines before circling back, and end with a wistful sigh. If you have two hours to give her, she’ll even proceed to philosophize on true love, soul mates, love at first sight, and reincarnation.

That’s what I was asking for. The story. Not just the bare bones factual summary.

FIL is a man who once told me he dedicated the first half of his life serving his country and the second half serving his wife. Here is a man who never wanted to leave China, but his wife up and left to the U.S. through a key connection MIL’s father had, leaving FIL back in China with their son, Hubby, and then convincing FIL to bring Hubby with him and move to America. Again, FIL didn’t want to, but ultimately did so for the sake of Hubby’s future. FIL struggled in America, really disliking it, and even chose consciously not to obtain U.S. citizenship, wanting to maintain his loyalty to his mother land, China. He had always planned on moving back to China after Hubby graduated from high school. Yet he couldn’t go back because of MIL’s health conditions. As a dutiful husband, he stayed in the U.S. even after Hubby’s graduation, to care after MIL.

For that kind of husband, all MIL could muster out was the bare bones factual summary that took less than one sentence to cover?

The difference between Hubby’s parents and my own parents is striking. My parents just posted a photo on Facebook of the two of them riding one of those two-person bicycles together, gleeful smiles all around. MIL and FIL bicker over who should roll out the dumpling dough and yell at each other, creating way harsh energies in our house. When my mom visited for two weeks, she’d ogle at our kitty daily, make cooing noises at him, and constantly remarked how adorable he was, saying he looked like a little Buddha cat. That was her favorite thing to say about Kitty– that he was a little Buddha cat. In contrast, MIL was here for three months and not once even looked in Kitty’s direction let alone make any positive remarks about him.

They’re gone and Hubby promised they won’t come in 2016. He promised. I told him I can’t look at their faces without being reminded of the horrible way my beloved cat died and so I can’t see them in 2016. Hubby agreed. I said we’ll reconvene at the close of 2016 to see where I stand in terms of healing and forgiveness, and only at that point, discuss whether they can come back and visit again. He looked like he wanted to object, to say I can’t permanently ban his parents from ever visiting us, but he said nothing. He relented and just nodded at me. So we’ll see.

I put a welt in their car.

They bought this stupid fucking Honda and keep insulting me by saying they bought us a car. Bull fucking shit. You bought yourself a car and now want to park your stupid fucking car in my garage forever. Hubby’s motorcycle and my car need to share a garage aisle while their stupid fucking car gets its own garage aisle. Also any time we ride in that stupid fucking car I sit backseat. MIL always takes the front seat.

Yesterday was a bad day. My days for the three and a half months they’ve been here have been either bad or tolerable. Yesterday was bad, real bad. I was missing Kitty really badly, we’re still working on resolving our ant problem in the kitchen thanks to them leaving food out uncovered all the time, they had friends over unannounced, uninvited at 8 am while I was still in my pajamas and about to head to work, Hubby and I have been fighting non-stop over his parents, I haven’t really been eating well, so I was in a very bad place.

So yesterday morning when I got in my car to go to work, I slammed my car door hard against their car. It only left a tiny dent. I wasn’t happy, so I swung my car door harder and slammed it again. Slightly bigger dent. Still not happy. I kicked my door as hard as I could so it could slam into their car as hard as it could and BAM. I even heard the metallic echo. Ding.

Happy.

I left a huge welt, scraped off all the silver paint so you could now see black, and you could even see the welt from half a mile away. Perfect.

I felt better. I have to say, I felt better. I felt relief. I felt release. Like whatever was pent up inside me just… released. It felt GOOD. I gotta tell you, I smiled a genuine smile and felt calm. Does that make me an innately evil person?

Anyway, I guess the positioning of the dent, near the hinge of the front passenger’s seat door, is such that now the front passenger door won’t open. When Hubby told me that this morning, I kind of giggled. “Oh… shit. Oops.” But make no mistake, I wasn’t regretful or anything. Just a giggly “oh, dang…”

Hubby’s pissed. Guess so are the in-laws. The damage will cost a couple thousand dollars to repair and right now, the front car door won’t open so MIL has to sit in the backseat.

Hubby then had the audacity to ask me if this now meant we were all even. Are you kidding me? They killed my cat and you think a stupid dent in their stupid fucking car calls it even? He says I need to stop saying they killed my cat. Yeah, yeah, we were all at fault. There is blame to be distributed all around. He should know his parents the best and should have warned me his parents would have been negligent and sucked at taking care of my beloved. I should never, ever, ever have entrusted them with Kitty knowing what I already know of their stupidity, selfishness, and lack of compassion, care, or love for anyone other than themselves. But you know what, it was still at their hands. It’s their fault I came home and had only one week to spend with Kitty and even that whole week they kept telling us we should not take off work that we should go to work and earn money and they’ll take care of the cat for us. Right, so you can do MORE damage to Kitty? Fuck off.

Hubby was so upset this morning. “You have the capacity to show so much compassion for others, for complete strangers,” he said, “so why is it you have such a small heart when it comes to my parents?”

Really? I have a small heart when it comes to his parents. I think I have an infinite amout of openness, dealing and dealing, tolerating them here for three and a half months, letting them hijack my kitchen, letting them break some of my favorite dishes so whole sets of porcelain dishware are now missing pieces (for anyone with OCD, you’ll understand how aggravating that might be), where underwear hangs from places underwear shouldn’t hang, where my whole lifestyle and how I arrange things in the house needs to change to accommodate a short, fat, handicapped woman, where there’s just racks of fruit being dried IN THEIR DEN (I think there is also an ant problem in the den, which has been occupied exclusively by them for the last three months and so if there is an ant problem, it would have been resolved between them and Hubby and unless I insert myself, I wouldn’t have known anything about it but the kitchen was a different story because I stepped FOOT into my kitchen), you know there were three rotten persimmons that they didn’t want to throw out so left three ROTTEN persimmons on our kitchen counter for a whole week before I got so fed up I threw them out and then they were all like who the hell threw out the persimmons we were gonna eat them and I’m thinking Jesus fucking Christ they’ve rotted! Where was I what was I saying.. right, all the shit they’ve done that I put up with, the people that they invite over to our house without telling us about who strut around like it’s THEIR place even while we’re still in pajamas, rubbing our eyes open, with morning breath, oh and did I mention the cat yet? That they killed my cat? Hubby keeps saying I need to stop saying they killed my cat. What should I say instead then, I ask? He then shakes his head and gets all despondent, feeling helpless about the whole situation.

I told him we need therapy. He says we don’t need therapy. I said fine, if you say so. He says I shouldn’t have put that huge dent in the car. Now it’s going to cost US thousands of dollars to repair because it’s OUR car. I told him fuck no over my dead body are we paying for any repairs on that car. I’m ready to drive that car into the ocean and now you want me to pay money to repair it? Fuck no. He sighs and says well I still shouldn’t have done that. I say he and his parents are lucky there was no baseball bat nearby. He wants to know why I’m like this right now, why I’m so upset. I say it’s because his fucking parents killed my cat. He says I need to stop saying that. It’s a broken record of gripes.

It’s 8:30 a.m.

It is 8:30 a.m. I am at my computer upstairs in my room doing my quiet little morning thing and then I hear

Ding dong (doorbell)

Our big front door opening and shutting. Feet shuffling.

AI-YAH! SHAR GAR GAR NAR LA GAR GAR LA!

AI-YOH….GAR GAR LA NAR NAR GAR LA LAR MAR!

NAR BAR GAR GAR SHAR MAR GAR GAR LA LA LA DAR!

Okay. Lots of different voices. Not just MIL and FIL. But I don’t have the guts to look. Also, I look like shit. It’s 8:30 a.m. in my own home so I’m not expecting company or anything. Thus, my hair is standing up in ten different directions, my face is bare, and I’m wearing PJs. In a moment or two, I’m going to be getting ready for work and heading out to the office.

It continues.

GAR GAR NAR GAR LA SHAR SHAR BAR NAR!

AI-YOH-WEI GAR GAR LA SHAR NAR NAR BAR BAR!

HA HA HA HA. HO HO HO HO.

GAR GAR NAR SHAR SHAR.

HA HA HA HA.

I shut my door and go to my happy place.

A few moments later, Hubby sneaks in.

“Did you know…?” he starts.

“I hope you’re not here to ask me why there’s people in our house at 8 in the morning. The answer would be no, I have no idea why. Did YOU know about this?” I ask.

“Um… I’m going to get dressed and go downstairs to see what’s going on.” Hubby darts back out of my room and I can see him scurrying to go make sense of the situation and assess.

Yeah. You go do that.

Fucking hell.

“Buddhists are so weird.”

Actually, the Chinese word they used is worse than saying “weird.” They said “shen jing bing,” like batshit crazy, or insane. Buddhists are batshit crazy.

They were talking about my veganism, which Hubby and I are observing for 49 days after Kitty’s passing. Well, Hubby’s going pescetarian. He figured that’s good enough. I’m going vegan and trying to observe what Buddhists would observe for vegetarianism, though still eating scallions, garlic, ginger, etc. not on my own– I won’t prepare food for myself with those items right now but since MIL insists on cooking for us (very sweet), I didn’t mention that and just let her do whatever, though trying to be mindful that it’s vegan. So, like, if I arbitrarily see bits of egg, I’ll just quietly pick them out and continue eating.

MIL does know about the Buddhist tradition of not eating scallions, garlic, and ginger. Hubby didn’t know that, however. We’re all at the dinner table together.

“Really? Buddhists don’t eat scallions, garlic, or ginger? Isn’t that still considered vegetarian though?” Hubby asks me.

Before I can answer, MIL interjects. She has this look of utter disgust and disdain on her face.

“Nope, Buddhists don’t eat that stuff. You didn’t know? Buddhists are shen jing bing. (Batshit crazy.) Of course scallions, garlic, and ginger is vegetarian, but they still won’t eat it. They treat it like it’s meat (huin). They’re shen jing bing.”

I don’t know enough Chinese nor do I have the energy to explain to her why Buddhists don’t eat those ingredients. Also, she obviously doesn’t give a shit and I’m no preacher. So I just let it go.

But inside I’m thinking, what a testament of personality.

Just when I thought we were making progress.

Since Kitty’s passing, MIL and FIL have been cooking vegan for me. It’s really sweet.

Last Friday when Hubby wasn’t home yet and it was just MIL and me, she grazed the subject of people visiting the house. Specifically, it had been planned that her friends would come this weekend and the next to celebrate her and FIL’s birthday. They don’t actually know when their birthday is, so there’s some day in December that the two just consolidate and celebrate their birthdays together. I don’t know or get the details, but it’s something to that effect.

Of course I said it was fine for her to entertain her guests here. She made it pretty clear she would handle everything, the entertaining, hosting, the food, everything. I showed her where the good teas were and if they wanted wine, our wines. I figured yes, it truly would be fine if I didn’t have to do anything and could simply stay upstairs and keep the door shut.

Hubby had told them no, no hosting guests at our house given recent tragic events, but I didn’t know this. I guess even after Hubby said no, MIL took it upon herself to ask me directly. Hubby didn’t ask me either. He just took it upon himself (awesome) to tell his mother no, no guests while we mourn Kitty. But MIL asked me and I was feeling kind that day and so I said yes.

The friends came over and brought all these party balloons and party decoration hangy things that somehow Hubby and I got manipulated into agreeing to hang up. So the house is all celebratory looking. I didn’t stay to hang out or eat dinner with any of them, but I did come downstairs for 5 minutes to give my polite greetings, then scurried back upstairs to shut my door.

After the friends left, I heard MIL and Hubby talking.

MIL: “I’m so glad Kelter is finally over her sadness. She’s all better now, did you see?”

Hubby (snappy): “What are you talking about? You don’t know anything. She’s still upset and crying every other day. You do realize she just faked a polite smile and came downstairs to chat with everyone for your benefit, right? She’s not actually happy. She’s still mourning.”

MIL: “Oh. Really? She’s not over it yet? It’s already been a whole week!”

Hubby (snappier): “Ma, no. Just, no. Just don’t say anything more. Stop talking.”

MIL (angrily): “How dare you speak to your mother that way!!! What kind of child have I raised!!!”

Hubby has agreed that they won’t come in 2016. I said I need a whole year of them staying far, far away. If he needs to observe his filial piety shit, he needs to visit them where they are. They can’t come here.

He said okay. He said whatever I want.

I told him the only thing that will make me feel better is if, when they are old and fucked up, we euthanize them. We’re going to neglect them, too. They can fend for themselves when it comes to feeding and what not. If that’s how they treat animals, that’s how they deserve to be treated. Like the very animals they “take care” of.

He said nothing.

Hubby tries to convince me it wasn’t their fault, that even though admittedly they don’t give a shit about cats, they knew this cat meant a lot to me, and so they would never intentionally hurt this cat. I believe Hubby. I believe they tried. They feel completely awful that Kitty has died and died so horribly and somehow there is an implied expectation that I go out of my way to assure them that I don’t blame them.

Well, I do. I blame them because if they truly cared, even if they didn’t know the first thing about cats, they would ask a hundred questions. They know how to use their damn phone to take selfies and send via WeChat. So they know how to take a hundred pictures of the cat, the cat’s poo, the cat’s food, and ask us if everything looks normal. If they paid any attention to the cat at all, they should have been alerted to the symptoms.

Had we caught Kitty’s illness sooner, not just the starvation and dehydration, but the aortic thrombosis, he still would have some chance, at least a year or two more, and I would have more time to prepare. Instead I had zero time to prepare and on my last night with Kitty, I could still hear his mother in the kitchen going on and on about dumb shit. At least do me the courtesy of not talking about dumb shit on the day you know will be the last day on this planet I have with my baby.

Instead, they chalked up Kitty’s awkward movements to “oh, he’s fat and lazy so that’s why ne never moves. We thought it was normal that he didn’t move because he’s so fat and lazy.”

Even if he is fat and lazy, they could have “checked in.” Said something like, “Hey, so I notice that your cat, like, never moves. He’s been planted in the same spot curled up with his head tucked in for the last 2 days and is refusing food. Is that normal? Also, funny enough, I haven’t seen any poo at all. Is that normal?” These are all questions any fucking ignorant uneducated piece of twit idiot could have asked.

So long as that piece of twit idiot had compassion.

But see, that’s the problem. They lack compassion. They lack the ability to observe other people’s (or other animals’) pain. That’s what happened. No one will acknowledge that’s what it is. This all went down the way it did because of the simple fact that they don’t genuinely give a shit about anyone else, not enough to observe when another is in pain.

They could swipe up a death row prisoner’s kidney, get that guy executed, take his kidney the same day, just to save their own lives without a blink of an eye.

I mention it because the conversation came up recently. MIL said she regretted doing that because it didn’t work. Doing that transplant in China caused even more severe health complications. That’s why she regretted it. Nothing to do with having taken a life to save hers, even though she hasn’t contributed anything of value to society. All she does is take and take and never give back. What justification does she have for living while another dies?

Hubby thinks they are good people because they care about, like, him, and his cousins. They care about each other.

That’s not “good.” That’s human. It’s human to care about your own. “Good” requires you to go beyond that. Not having the capacity to love animals is a symptom of a lacking in compassion. Lacking compassion is why they could miss so many red flag signs Kitty exhibited. Lacking compassion is why they failed to communicate anything to us about Kitty.

I know they feel just terrible. But please no one expect me to take up that task of assuring them it’s not their fault and that I don’t blame them and try to make them feel better about themselves. They should feel awful. I feel awful. I feel guilty. They bear some of that guilt, too.

I didn’t look away as the catheter was stabbed into his jugular because the arteries in his legs were collapsing and so it had to be done by the jugular. I watched all of it and I was there as he yowled, all of it branded into my permanent memory. I watched and didn’t look away because I did this to him. I caused this. The least I could do was watch.

The kitty is mentally alert, so much more stable, eating on his own now, doing some drinking of water on his own but not enough yet so some still needs to be force-fed by syringe, and pooping and urinating properly again. Still constant monitoring and nursing around the clock to make sure intake and outtake are balancing each other out.

But he can’t walk. Has lost mobility in hind legs and minimal sensitivity in tail. (It went from none to minimal.) So we nurse him the way you nurse an elderly bedridden vegetable– around the clock care and like a nurse would do, logging every action in writing and measuring quantity of his intake and his bowel movement. Hubs and I have been alternating taking off work and/or working from home to care for kitty. His parents haven’t openly said anything about this, at least not within my earshot yet.

FIL seems to feel really bad about this all. The other day he made me something he thinks is one of my favorites, which is pretty good actually– sweet buns. He makes these flaky buns filled with sugar and fries them. The sugar melts into yummy sugary goo. It’s like a donut. Who doesn’t love donuts? MIL made me won ton soup, too, from scratch, another thing I really like. I noticed both also seem to be quieter in their activities downstairs.

The other day MIL said to me, “Since you don’t have children, I know that you see your cat as a human baby. It’s a natural thing to do. And so you’re treating this situation as any mother would do for her infant son. I understand.”

I don’t know if that’s a right or wrong psychoanalytical assessment of me but at this point I’m not worried about self-awareness. More worried about kitty getting better and regaining full mobility.

Now all we’re doing is waiting for 4 pm to go pick up kitty. There’s nothing else to do but wait for 4 pm and pray every moment until then.

I hear MIL and FIL bustling about downstairs, the TV is on, but I don’t know what else is happening with them. I’m upstairs and even though I’m hungry, I’m just not at a place where I can go downstairs and convincingly deliver the lie I’ve been coached to deliver.

We are supposed to act like this is no big deal, that there is nothing seriously wrong with my cat (and definitely not mention the dehydration and malnourishment), and that he’s just old, obese, and things like this happen from time to time, with this time being particularly, unexplainably bad. We’re supposed to comfort them and assure them they did nothing wrong, and thank them for taking care of my cat, and thank them for cooking us a big, delicious dinner last night (that we didn’t end up touching, because we were at the pet ER…).

I can appreciate how emotionally complex this situation is. They did try their best. I believe that. Their best was just, unfortunately, also the case law definition of negligence. They are Hubby’s parents and Hubby feels a deep sense of filial piety toward them. We just landed from an extremely uncomfortable 15 hour flight, he’s sick with the flu, I’m sick with the flu, we were both hungry, and then the cat was immobile and the next thing we know, Hubby and I are waiting and pacing around the pet ER waiting room all night, slapped with one medical bill after another, signing and authorizing a series of astronomical invoices with disclaimers about death and asking about consents for resuscitation or DNR. And then I turn around and curse his parents in his presence. Of course it’s to be expected, he’d blow up. He doesn’t want me to blame his parents, so I have to lie over and over again that I don’t blame his parents, but no one believes the lie, least of all him, and yet he hears it, wants to hear it, but isn’t convinced of its veracity, and so he’s feeling stuck.

Most of all he doesn’t want to accept that his parents were, in fact, negligent, and that they are unreliable narrators. Whatever they say, we can’t believe what happened. Based on a preponderance of evidence in other avenues, we know that this is how they are. Hubby knows this, but he can’t accept it. He can’t openly acknowledge this.

I’m trying so hard not to play the blame game. Worst yet, if I am being instructed that I can’t blame them, the next person in line I can blame is only myself. So I feel overwhelmed and burdened with guilt that I’ve allowed my cat to suffer from starvation and dehydration for two weeks, and now he’s suffering from extremely painful medical treatments, and he has no idea what’s going on, and I’m separated from him until 4 pm. When I saw him at the vet’s place during visitation hours, I broke down and just cried my eyes out. I have never, ever in my life seen such a depressed, broken-hearted looking cat. And I brought this on.

Just returned from visitation hours at the vet hospital. He can’t come home with us at 11 am. He didn’t respond to treatments. Now his stay is prolonged until 4 pm. When we saw him, he lifted his head and meowed at me and my heart broke that I couldn’t take him home right then. He’s hooked up to an EKG, IV, and getting an enema. Starting in-tube treatment through his nostrils as soon as we leave.

When we got home, MIL comes out and yells to Hubby to come down. She starts talking about HER own health insurance stuff and how she needs him to take care of some stuff and make calls for her about her health insurance policy.

Hubby scowls at her and said, “Can’t this wait?”

She scowls back. “No. We’re leaving soon. You need to take care of this before we leave.”

Hubby: “We just got back yesterday, we’re sick, we’re tired, and now the cat is in the emergency room. Can’t this wait? Let me focus on handling the cat first and then we can talk about you tomorrow. Is that okay?”

MIL doesn’t look happy, but she’s reluctant. “Fine.” She drops her arms to her sides and sulks away.

FIL hasn’t come out of his room at all even though it’s past his lunch time. He didn’t have breakfast or lunch. I think he’s really upset and feels super guilty. I feel bad that he feels bad and I know it’s not his fault, not in an intentional, malicious sense. It’s as if I was asked and compelled to do something beyond my capability or qualifications, I tried to do it, and even though I gave it my best shot, everything still went to hell in a hand basket. I’d feel awful about it, too. So I get it. But it wouldn’t be my fault if the fact of the matter is I wasn’t capable or qualified for the task in the first place. So it’s not my in-laws’ fault.

Earlier this morning we pretended like everything was okay and this is no big deal at all, just a minor thing and we’d go get the cat at 11 am, on Hubby’s urging that we lie to his parents. At 10:30 am when I came downstairs first, getting ready for visitation hours (and just learning that the cat WON’T be coming home with us at 11 am…) I was trying to hold it in, hold it in, hold it in, then MIL came out and said, beaming, “Ah! Going to go get the cat home now, eh?” And I just burst. I broke out in tears and, through tears, squeaked out almost inaudibly, “No.. he’s not responding to treatment. We can’t take him home until 4 now. We’re just going to see him during visiting hours.”

As I took my exit and Hubby entered, MIL went up to him. “So. That bad? What’s going on? I thought you said everything is okay.”

I left and was out of earshot before I heard Hubby’s response.