Mitigated Success

Inevitably every time I speak with my parents, absurd childhood memories resurface. Not that we discussed them, they simply re-emerge under a new perspective.

When my parents got married, they bought a house in a new residential development, an upscale bungalow with an unfinished basement. My mother lived there mostly all by herself as my father was away for work the majority of time. So that she wouldn’t feel too lonely, the legend has it that my mother adopted two cats. Her companions were religiously kept locked in the basement, for shedding hair was not permitted in her living quarters, or sent outside during the warmer days. My mother recounted that one of the cat became twice as big as the other one, presumably because it ate both portions of food, she concluded. Not that this realization helped the smaller one in any fashion. My mother did not believe in the power of intervention. It’s unpleasant. A few months later, the smaller cat died and half a year later, the other one disappeared she recalled. I don’t believe they were ever given names. The experience, no doubt, was deemed a brilliant success for a few months later my mother decided it was time to have children…