My cat is a borderline

like all cats

Do you know what it’s like to love someone-including an animal-and be willing to do anything to keep them safe, while at the same time wanting to strangle the person or creature? That’s been this week for me with my cat Mina who disappeared into a wall for 24 hours and pushed me to the edge of composure.

Now that she’s out and safe, I want to complain about it. Thank you for “listening.”

All my life I have loved cats. Cats and I have a natural affinity for each other. They tend to like and trust me; there must be something about my smell or my way that’s appealing to them. Cats have been my steadfast friends since I was a little boy. We had many cats when I was growing up, but my mother eventually gave them all away when they became too inconvenient. Every cat relationship in my childhood ended in loss. Sam, Dusty, Brownie, Gadget. They were all eventually given away.

As an adult, I knew that when I got a cat, nothing could make me give her up. I wouldn’t abandon a cat, or “re-home” one. No matter what. Once you take on an animal, that’s your animal and your responsibility for the rest of your life; at least that’s my personal standard. Seeing pets given away or abandoned lightly, as if it were normal, distresses me a great deal. The only thing that could part me from one of mine would be some condition that made me physically or economically incapable of caring for them.

Mina’s story starts with Mink, her predecessor. Mink was my best girl for the 17 years of her life. One day in 2000, my boss came into the office with a young female tabby someone had dumped off in the country at the side of the road. The vet who examined her said she’d already been pregnant and born a litter within the first year of her life. And someone just threw her out on the side of the road.

This little chirping tabby with a kink at the end of her broken tail loved humans, but she especially loved me. She twined herself around my legs and I made the decision to take her in less than 20 seconds.

Mink had the personality of a dog. There was no human she didn’t like, and she trotted up to everyone for attention and pets. She was also one of those little cats with a huge purr you could hear in the other room.

The first year I had her, Mink went missing for three weeks. I couldn’t eat, or sleep, or stop crying. With animals, I’m as soft as you can be. One day, my landlord walked up to the apartment with Mink who was almost starved to death; she must have been trapped somewhere before finding a way to escape. Joy. She recovered and spent the rest of her life with me in several different states until she died in 2016, along with my two other cats.

This was her last day in the sun; the next day I had a house-call vet come and put her down while I held her (she was old, wasting, and unhappy).

Eight years on, I still tear up thinking about her. You can’t imagine a more loving, devoted cat. I could not have been luckier.

During the same period, my diabetic cat Sophie died, and so did my longtime roommate’s cat, Twix (who became mine, too). It was a very sad few months. It was also happening during the final rupture with my mother and my subsequent nervous breakdown. 2016 was an annus horribilis.

But a few months later, when the time was right, another cat came along. My housemate Mary’s friend had a cat who had birthed a big litter, and the runt still didn’t have a home. Actually, the runt (Mina) was taken too young from her mother, but since that was already decided and I couldn’t change it, I agreed to take her.

How could I not?

She “imprinted” on me, if that word can be used for cats. Mina followed me, slept with me under the covers (she still does). She even tried to nurse me. Everything she did was perfectly calculated to evoke maximum “parental care” response, and I was in love with her from the first time I held her.

And she was so sweet, and so trusting and affectionate with me, it was almost as if Mink were reincarnated, or that God had sent Mina to me to help mend my heart after Mink was gone.

She’s eight years old now, and is the prototypical scaredy cat. She trusts no one but me. When a stranger comes into the house, she slinks across the floor to hide under the bed. I’ve tried to socialize her more, but it’s just her nature. She’s small and timid, and she’s only ever going to trust me. And how she trusts me-you’d have to see it to understand.

She’s also very good at getting into hidey holes then being afraid to come out. At least five times, she’s hidden in a crevice all day or longer. One night she got out and was missing for 24 hours. All that while she was under the front porch making no sound no matter how many times I called her and shook the treat bag. I was hysterical when she got out-I lose all my ability to think and control my composure when a cat of mine is missing or threatened. Total decompensation. I wish I handled it better, but I don’t.

This week she went missing again for 24 hours. Kevin was here doing work on the studio, and that means his 80-pound dog Vector was here too. Mina usually just hid in the bedroom, but I got up the other morning and heard mewling crying but couldn’t find her. Hours went by, and I couldn’t triangulate the source of the sound. It was coming from this wall, or this ceiling, or this other one.

She’d apparently gotten to the other side of the apartment and into the cellar area—chock full of rafters, crevices, holes in walls—and felt trapped and unable to walk past the dog in the other room. But now she was terrified and unwilling to come out.

This is what I don’t understand. She’d cry a few times and I’d talk back in a gentle voice, but then she’d go silent for hours and not respond. It’s such intense frustration. When you can’t see them, you’re worried that they’re hurt, or trapped. It rips me up.

I searched everywhere, repeatedly. No sign of her. By the end of 24 hours I was just going to go to bed and suffer, hoping she’d come out overnight. Then I heard her crying from the bedroom closet wall. Turns out there’s a shelf, a box-like structure, in the ceiling of my closet that can only be gotten to by an opening in the rafters in the cellar portion that I didn’t even see. I ripped down the insulation on the half-finished closet wall panel and saw a 1-inch opening. “Meow!” I could hear her clearly. She was in the ceiling in this little box.

Went back to the cellar, found the access hole, and spoke sweetly to her. Finally, she poked her little face out so I could touch her, but she was too scared to come further. When I finally grabbed her, she was so upset she clawed me and yowled for the first time in her life. But I got her!

After a big feeding she stayed at my side purring and twining and crawling on me, and all was finally right with the world.

But how can this cat trust me so implicitly except when she gets to hiding somewhere, and then she “torments” me by staying absolutely silent for up to eight hours while I torture myself with gruesome fantasies about what may have happened to her? Why don’t they come when their beloved humans are there to rescue them?

Because all cats are fuckin’ borderlines, that’s why.

While I’ve always loved animals, I love them even more as I age. Show me your dog, your cat, your guinea pig, your donkey—I’m going to love that animal. And when they’re my responsibility they’re the most important thing; if it comes down to it, my animals will eat before I do, and won’t leave a burning or flooded house without my cats, or I’ll go down with them.

It’s true that many more adults today are treating their pets as if they were children, often in ways that are twee, obnoxious, and over the top to the rest of us. It irks me, too. Pets are not “children.” I know this. Yet I think I can grasp, at least somewhat, the kind of powerful protective drive that a parent must feel, because I feel something like it, something strong, about my animals. If I experience a tenth of what it is like to love a child, then that is surely the strongest human emotion in the world.

Thank God my Mina is back out of the wall. I must try to temper my reaction the next time this happens, trusting that she’ll eventually find her way out. But boy, it’s really hard for me to do; ask Kevin how nuts I was when she was missing.

I’m never not aware of how lucky I am to have a creature that loves me this much; I just wish she knew that I’m always safe and that I will always protect her.