Kicked Out For A Cat The Day I Became A Federal Agent

My mother has always been incredibly careless.
The thing is, she only ever seemed to lose my things.
Not just a critical client file or my passport right before boarding a flight. Every time she left me scrambling and humiliated, she would weep and insist her intentions were pureshe was just trying to help. Yet, she had perfectly preserved every single baby tooth my younger brother, Leo, lost when he was six.
This time, my company needed me to fly out of state for three days over the major holiday weekend. My mom volunteered to watch my cat.
When I got back, the cat was, predictably, gone.
She started her routinecrying, hysterics. Leo accused me of being dramatic. I stood there, hands in my pockets, and a sudden, sharp laugh escaped me.
"It wasn't even my cat," I said.
1
The emergency project came up during the holiday rush. I had three days of required travel. Finding a pet sitter for my cat, a tabby named Rory, was nearly impossible, especially since he had just undergone a neuter surgery and needed careful attention.
I was frantic when my mother stepped in, offering to cover the three days. I was deeply skeptical, but I meticulously went over the care instructions, provided all the necessary supplies, and even set up a pet camera.
"You know how important Rory is to me, right?" I asked her one last time. Id gone through a really dark period with depression years ago. It wasn't until I adopted Rory that my life started to heal.
To ensure both my mom and Leo were motivated, I specifically wired ten thousand dollars to each of them before I left, purely for taking good care of Rory while I was gone.
The day after I landed in the neighboring state, the feed from the pet camera suddenly pointed straight at the wall. My messages went unread; neither Mom nor Leo answered their phones.
Anxiety clawed at me. I sped up my work, finished my presentation half a day early, and dragged my suitcase straight to my mom's house. I shouted Rory's name, but there was only silence.
The place didn't look or smell like a home with a cat. My supplies and the camera were gone.
"Where is my cat?" I stormed into the living room and yanked Leo away from his video game console.
He looked up, dazed. "What cat?"
It took him a moment, and then he grinned. "Oh! Did we have a cat here?"
I instinctively raised my hand to strike him. He flinched and yelled for Mom. She finally emerged from her room. "The cat was too wild," she said dismissively. "It ran off."
"Rory is a house cat. He's terrified of the outdoors. There's no way he just 'ran off.' I set up the cage, his bed, and even installed a mesh barrier on the windows. How did he run off? How many more of my things do you have to lose!"
Rory was like family to memy most treasured possession. I had stressed his importance again and again, yet they were both so nonchalant.
"So he ran off!" My mom's voice rose. She kicked my suitcase, sending it skidding across the floor. "Hes just an animal. Why are you yelling at your own mother?"
Leo stepped in front of her, shielding her. He pointed a finger at me. "Mom raised us single-handedly, worked her fingers to the bone, and now youre yelling at her over a cat?" he shouted. "She did you a favor, and now shes the villain?"
A furious pressure built in my chest. Id worked three exhausting days, dragging my suitcase straight from the airport without even a change of clothes, and this was my welcome.
I took a shaky breath, cutting off my moms theatrical sob. "Just tell me," I ground out. "When did he go missing?"
My mom, touched by the public display of maternal devotion from her son, leaned into Leos shoulder, weeping softly. She mumbled, "I don't remember."
I almost collapsed.
Ignoring Leos insults, I rushed out, searching every bush and every corner of the neighborhood, from daylight until the streetlights came on, my back aching. I even tried a ridiculous folk remedy Id read about. I begged the building manager for access to the security footage. Nothing.
The only thing I found was Rorys carrier and feeding bowls, crammed into a dumpster behind the apartment complex.
That night, alone in my small rental, I watched the recorded footage from the pet camera, tears blurring my vision. Suddenly, the screen switched to a black, shaky image.
Then, a sickening sounda thud of a foot connecting with fleshfollowed by a terrible, high-pitched cat scream.
Leos lazy voice cut through the dark. "My sister treats this thing like gold."
Thump. Another kick.
"Is this why shes supposed to spend all her money on me?"
I shot up from the couch.
2
To my surprise, Leo admitted it right away.
He pulled up his sleeve, revealing a few faint scratch marks. "The little beast attacked me! So what if I kicked it a few times? Dont be so ungrateful, treating an animal like some kind of trophy."
He made Mom show the back of her hand, which had a faint, thin scratch.
I knew my cat. Rory was a domestic pet, not feral, and he'd just had surgery. He would only scratch if he was terrified or in pain, or if someone was deliberately provoking him.
I was certain now: Rory hadn't run away. I badgered my mother, my voice tight, demanding to know where they had dumped him.
"Enough! Its 'cat, cat, cat' all day long! You're almost thirty and still not married, just obsessed with that animal. I've wanted to get rid of him for a long time!"
"My marital status has nothing to do with this!" I retorted, shaking with rage. "Why would you get rid of my cat? Rory was the only thing my father left me seven years ago. I let you get away with losing my files, my passport, my paperworkbut how could you do this to Rory?"
My mothers chest heaved. "You are unbelievably selfish! If you don't get married, how is your brother supposed to find a wife with a crazy spinster sister dragging down the family name? Are you trying to ruin us?"
My not getting married would only ruin her chance to pocket a hefty wedding check.
She launched into a tirade about how wonderful my most recent date had been. She claimed I was wasting my life and money on a mere 'beast.' "And you act so high and mighty with your fancy graduate degree! It was clearly a waste of money!"
I let out a hysterical laugh. "If he was so great, why didnt you marry him? Does being a widow at home somehow improve our feng shui?" The loss of Rory had completely consumed me. I was losing control of my tongue.
I turned my fury toward Leo. "Ruined his life? He's an unskilled dropout who cant hold a job! I had to beg my company director to give him a dead-end maintenance job as a favor, and he's still living rent-free in the condo I bought! I think my life is the one being ruined by the two of you!"
It was a rare explosion of emotion. Everythingthe lost passport, the expense reports thrown into the washing machineall the years of her casual, malicious sabotage flooded over me.
Leo shifted, trying to play mediator, but I swept everything off the nearest table with a violent crash.
My mom started to wind up for her performance, but I stopped her by smashing the ceramic ashtray against the tile floor.
The white tile cracked, a deep divot marking my absolute fury.
"Now. You will tell me exactly where you dumped him. Immediately. Or I swear, this isnt over. If Rory isnt found, you two are out of my house!"
My eyes were burning as I delivered the ultimatum. "I mean it."
Finally, faced with my uncompromising fury, Mom and Leo confessed the truth.
They hadn't lost him. They had sold him to an illegal meat market.
My head spun. I sank onto the sofa, the world tilting.
3
A gust of icy wind bit through my jacket. The winter snow felt warm compared to the freezing cold in my heart.
When I was searching for Rory, seeing the falling snow, I kept thinking: My little Rory is so sensitive to the cold. He has no survival skills and just had surgery. How could he possibly live out there?
My self-loathing had peaked. I hadn't dared to stop searching in the freezing temperatures, afraid that if I left, I would miss him.
But I never, ever imagined my mother and brother were capable of this.
Tears streamed down my face, blurring my vision. Leo led us, a family procession of absolute horror, to the meat market, tucked into the darkest corner of the local farmers plaza, operating brazenly in the open.
I still clung to a sliver of hope until I saw it: a small, yellow vest lying in the mud near a pile of cratesthe New Year outfit I had dressed Rory in before I left.
"Hey! What are you doing back? Once it's sold, there are no refunds. It's already been processed." The butchers words were a knife twisting in my heart.
My mom, ever the victim, complained to the butcher. "It's my daughter. She's upset about this." She made me sound like an overdramatic child.
The butcher gave me a strange look. "You didn't get her permission? I asked if you were sure, and you said you had the final say. You even took an extra fifty bucks, said the meat was good."
I balled my hands into fists, my nails digging into my palms. I pointed a trembling finger at my mother and Leo. "You two are out of my house. Starting today."
These people, who could be so casually cruel, so indifferent to lifeI should have cut them off long ago. I shouldn't have clung to the faint hope of family connection, shouldn't have given them the chance to hurt my Rory.
A crushing, suffocating grief overwhelmed me. I swallowed the lump in my throat and turned to leave.
But my mother grabbed my arm, her voice piercing.
"You're going to kick your mother and brother out for a cat?"
The explosive statement caught the attention of everyone in the market. They gathered around curiously.
My mom didnt care. She sat down on the filthy ground and launched into her familiar, agonizing wail, slapping the pavement with her hand. This was the tactic she had used for years to force my father and me into submission. It worked when she insisted on a late-night drive for a craving, which led to my fathers fatal car accident, and it worked when she shredded my university application file, nearly costing me my education.
She would cry, she would cause a scene, and the world would forgive her. Everyone would say, "Calm down, she didnt mean it. No one wanted this to happen." But my father and I were always the ones who paid the price.
"Sweetheart," a woman in the crowd said kindly. "I know young people love their pets, but a pet can't be more important than your mother."
Leo stepped forward and helped my mom up. "Sis, just blame me. Don't kick Mom out. She's getting older. If you need to take it out on someone, kick me out."
I stood perfectly still, watching their disgusting performance, unmoved.
Then, my mother suddenly shoved Leo away and bolted. She ran up the nearest exterior staircase toward the second-floor roof.
She scrambled over the low wall, her feet dangling over the edge.
"If you hate me that much," she shrieked for the crowd's benefit, "I'll jump right now and pay for your cat!"
4
Half her body was hanging over the edge.
But I knew she wouldn't jump.
After my father died in the car crash she caused, she'd threatened to join him out of fear of my grandparents' wrath. She was still here, wasn't she?
"You always say it was an accident, an honest mistake, just 'carelessness,'" I yelled up at her, my voice raw. "Would you be this 'careless' if it was Leos cat? Or if it was the CEO's cat? You did this on purpose! You wanted to twist the knife, to hurt me! Who gives their daughter's most cherished companion to a meat market? Who does that?"
My sentence was cut short by her shrill scream.
"You finally said it! You think I favor your brother! You're using this cat as an excuse to destroy me!" My mother clutched the railing, sobbing to the crowd. "My daughter has a Masters degree from a top university. My son only has a vocational certificate. Who am I really favoring? I'm the most unjustly accused person alive!"
I laughed, a sharp, bitter sound. She was going to use my success against me? Every family resource had been channeled to Leo. Tens of thousands of dollars spent on tutors and school changes for him to barely squeak out a certificate. Meanwhile, I funded my entire education with scholarships and loans. I had to beg my teachers to vouch for me to keep her from marrying me off to an older man at seventeen. And now she was using my hard-won success as proof that she wasn't prioritizing Leo?
The surrounding onlookers bought it hook, line, and sinker. They gave me judgmental looks. "Young lady, you can't just abandon your family once you've made it big."
"She made my son a janitor in her company!" my mother cried.
"That's because he wouldn't learn basic office software! I did his work for him for the first month until his supervisor finally moved him to a job where he couldn't cause trouble!"
Leo walked out of the crowd, his face contorted in an expression of anguish. He slowly knelt on the ground in front of me.
"Please, Sis, stop! I know I'm useless and a failure, but please don't upset Mom. I don't have Dad anymore, and I can't lose her, too."
Several people started recording on their phones, their eyes blazing with righteous anger. "Look at this entitled person! For a cat, she makes her brother kneel and forces her mother to threaten suicide!"
"Is a human life worth less than a cat's now? Society is falling apart!"
Trapped by the torrent of moral condemnation, I had no choice but to concede. I told my mother to come down, promising I wouldnt press the issue for now. She instantly embraced Leo, and the two of them wept together, a touching scene of mother-son love for the cameras.
As the crowd dispersed, I started to leave. Leo walked up to me, his expression suddenly shifting back to a smirk.
"You know," he said, his eyes glittering with malicious glee, "how loud your little cat screamed when I choked it and hung it up?" He mimicked the sickening sound, then looked at Mom, and they exchanged a smug glance.
"How does the owner feel about that?" he taunted.
The provocative, cruel smile danced on his face. I stopped, a sudden change sweeping over me. The gloom lifted. I smiled, too.
I looked directly into his startled eyes.
"Who told you," I asked, my voice dangerously calm, "that was my cat?"

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