Sidenote: I write this from Dallas! Things are heating up down here as FinCon finally approaches. I’m looking forward to seeing everyone and learning lots of things. Responses to emails, tweets, and comments will probably be delayed. There will be a new post next Monday, though. Stay tuned!
The scene: Me, coming home on a Sunday afternoon after spending the weekend at my parent’s house.
I put my key in the door. I think to myself, “that’s weird, Bartholomew isn’t meowing up a storm on the other side of the door like normal.” I enter my unit to find.…. no cat. No cat ANYWHERE. The panic takes a bit to set in, but when it does it hits me like a tidal wave (embarrassingly enough in front of the neighbors). I search the 450 sq ft unit and leave no nook or cranny unturned. The cat is gone.
The neighbors saw something weird over the weekend. Someone with a flashlight poking around the property. But they didn’t call the police because it could’ve been me. They said it was the contractor I fired. A different neighbor saw the former tenant and his car at the house that weekend too. Two viable suspects, with very plausible reasons to take my cat. Both know me well enough taking the cat and leaving the valuables lying around (iPad, TV, PS3, computer, 3DS…) is the best way to hurt me. The police are puzzled. They take my name and a few photos and leave.
I’m devastated. Crushed. Empty. My life is nothing without the cat.
I take the next day off work and start looking for him. The shelter hasn’t seen anything but my Facebook post has them on the lookout. They tell me cats like him don’t come through the shelter.
The week passes agonizingly slowly. I cry at work on Tuesday because my morning routine was cat-less. No kitty watching me brush my teeth, waiting for me to finish showering, or winding between my legs in hopes of some more food before I leave. Everyone at work is sympathetic.
Who am I without this cat?
Friday rolls around. I’ve gotten a live trap from a friend and set it on the porch. I go to put food in the cage and.…. SCARE THE CAT AWAY! The cat is alive! He’s not catnapped! He looks in decent health for being on the run for a week!
I set an alarm for 2 am. It rolls around and I ghost to the bathroom window to see if I’ve caught anything. The trap is still open. Drats. But wait? What’s that in the corner of the window on the stairs? It’s Mew!
He noses around the porch a bit, uses the kitty litter, and stares at the window I’m breathlessly waiting behind. Of course, he’s my cat so he doesn’t go in the trap. Turns out he was eating the neighbors’ dry food and wasn’t hungry. At least I know he’s alive and not being tortured by someone with a grudge against me.
Saturday the security cameras I purchased arrived and my friend helps me set it up. The picture is sharp, I can see the porch through the app, and I set up motion detection so I get an email and an alert every time something moves.
My mom drives up Sunday night and stays up, watching the feed on the TV. Besides watching a spider build a web in front of the camera, there is nothing. I’m torn. I’m supposed to leave for a work trip Monday morning. Mom decides to stay in my place through Wednesday morning to see if she can catch him. No dice. The trap goes to the neighbor across the street while I try to enjoy my business trip to DC.
I fly home Friday. I’m supposed to travel to Minnesota for the weekend, but my boyfriend told me he was sick so I should stay home and look for the cat. I confer with the neighbors who tell me they saw him once or twice but couldn’t get him. They’ve nicknamed him White Lightning because he’s so fast. They did catch and piss off a few raccoons though.
I take a walk through the alley and speak to a few new people. No one’s seen him but they’ll be on the lookout. I go back to the house and check my phone to find a message on Facebook from a neighbor further down the alley. Mew is across the street and I should get there RIGHT NOW! I race down the street to find him in a garden hiding behind some old corn husks. I try to get him to come to me but he runs. I follow him for a bit before I lose him and head back to her house. Mew had the same idea because I spotted him behind a few trash cans across the street.
I managed to slooowwwwlllyyyy cajole him across the street with a can of wet food and a bottle of cat treats. Once he settled in to eat, I pounced. I expected to close in around his spine, but he’d lost so much weight and moved so fast I ended up with his tail. I dragged him growling and spitting to me while telling the neighbor to GET THE CAGE! A few seconds of struggling lead to a lot of fur flying around and the cat in the cage.
HE WAS MINE ONCE AGAIN! No more wild kitty roaming around. A solid meal and a bath led to a kitty that was happy, warm, and purring in my bathroom. I still had to deal with some residual fleas, but things rapidly returned to normal, a normal that I feel grateful to this day I get to have.
I am a Cat Lady.… or am I?
While Mr. Mew was out having fun and gallivanting about the neighborhood, I was having an existential crisis. I am a cat lady. I am owned by Mew. I even mention him when people in the blog world ask me for a blurb.
I love my cat with all my heart. What was I going to do if I couldn’t get him back? Would I have a Mew-shaped hole in my heart forever? Would I get another kitty? What would I introduce myself as in the future?
Fortunately, I ended up not having to come with answers to those difficult questions when I got him back.
I am “Job Title”.….. or am I?
It’s a rule of life that people will ask you, “So, what do you do for work?”. I answer with my job and a brief description and watch their eyes light up. I have a cool job with a company that’s renowned around the world. I get a lot of satisfaction from those kinds of interactions. Losing Bartholomew made me think: How will I react to losing my work identity?
Will I be ok with saying “I’m an artist/entrepreneur/real estate guru”?
Will I be ok with not having a “cool job”?
Will I be ok walking away from work-related accolades?
I’m not sure how I’ll react, to be honest. I fortunately have a lot of time to think this over and prepare. Losing Mew gave me a glimpse into how it feels to have a main portion of my identity changed, so I’ll have to do some serious thinking and prepping for the day I hand in my notice at work.
Have you lost a pet? Did you get them back? If you’ve left a job, how did you react? Any tips for me when I get there?
Oh my god. I actually cried reading this. I CANNOT imagine the pain I would feel if Zap went missing even for a second. I’m guilty of doing frantic searches around the house to make sure he isn’t trapped in the dishwasher or something. I AM SO HAPPY that you got Mew back. Our furry friends really are more like family than they are pets. Any idea how he got out?
I have no clue 🙁 The doors were locked and he was happily eating all the food I left for the weekend when I closed the door. The laundry basket and some bins were on the floor though, so it definitely could’ve been someone breaking in. Now I have security cameras and very little worry!
I’m so glad you got Mew back! I’m sure having to think about a potential loss of your cat lady identity was horrible, but you make an interesting link here between that and the future change in your work identity. There’s a lot of focus on the money side of FIRE, but it’s so important to think about the change in identity too!
I’m also so guilty of asking the kneejerk “what do you do?” question, but I’d love to get away from that. We’re all so much more than our job titles (even if it sometimes doesn’t feel like it), even people not pursing FIRE, and I want to keep that in mind when meeting new people!
Thanks Erin! As you know I was not myself without knowing he’s ok.
It’s also difficult to go against social norms and not ask about work. It’s a safe topic to talk about! (normally). Guess we should default to talking about the weather again lol
I don’t ask people what they do for work. I ask people what they do when they aren’t at work. It’s amazing (and sad) how many people don’t have an answer. If someone asks me what I do for work they get a 30 second elevator speech and then I start talking about the things I’d rather be doing.
Yes! “What do you like to do outside of work?” “Ummmmm”. I think it’s sad how many people just live to work. Thanks for commenting!
I think this is very cool how you took such an awful thing (I would totally lose it if my lil’ guy went missing) and made it into a much deeper question. There are so many people in my industry that retire, wait the mandated 6 months before they can come back as a contractor and then come back because they “had nothing to do.” They have lived for their jobs for so long that they hadn’t developed any other part of their life. Having conversations like that is one of my main drivers to be as active outside of work as I am at work. I want to be sure that when I do retire in ~10 years, I have something to retire to. One of the best pieces of advice I’ve heard so far is: “Don’t retire FROM something; retire TO something.”
To take it one step further, Fierbird, I learned that having something to do is great after retirement- but what are you going to do with that something? They recommended we set goals to achieve with our something to feel like we’re still accomplishing things.
I like this train of thought. In my mind, this brings things from what are you going to do to what does that mean? Takes things from a personal level to potentially a community/global level, assuming that you have those types of aspirations of course. Something else to ponder 🙂
What an awful two weeks. Again, so glad to hear he’s back!
On the job front, my second job for 6.5 years was as a (very) part time park ranger. I still loved it when I quit, but with a toddler and a main job I work 80% time, it was finally time to let it go.
Even now, when I quit last December, I get a little pang when people ask what I do and I can’t also say park ranger any more. Funny, because I love my current job as well, but it does take more explaining. Plus, when we’re out and about in nature I felt I had the right to yell at people when they were doing stupid things like feeding ducks or letting their dogs run wild lol.
So to answer your question, yes it’s been hard even though I’m still working another job! I don’t plan to quit that one even when I hit FI at this point, but if I did, I think I would just tell people flat out that I was retired. If more people in the FIRE community talked freely about early retirement, maybe it wouldn’t be such a crazy thing. Or maybe it still would.
Thanks Angela, me too! I think a park ranger would be a super fun job to have. I can see why you wouldn’t want to leave it!
Thank goodness Mew is back! I lost a hamster once when I was younger, but it was much less worrisome (he was always hiding random places). We eventually found him in our heating ducts.
I love how you relate this to the job title/who am I question. I often mention work when people ask about me and what I do, but there is more than that. I am a wife and mother, a runner and biker, a reader and a random adventure seeker. Hmmm, I may need to get a nameplate for all that!
Hamster on the run! Watch out world! I’m not sure you’ll find a nameplate big enough, but it’s awesome you have that problem!!
I am very happy you got Mew back. For various reasons my former stray dog has gotten out a few times, luck I have always gotten him back within a couple of hours for which I (and my other dog) are extremely grateful for.
I have an unimportant job in healthcare most people have know clue about but still would be weird explaining what you do after retiring (many years to come up with). I guess investor, Traveller, stay at home dog Mom lol. I am not a social person so probably won’t really come up much but something to think about
Always better to have an answer ready even if you don’t get to use it very many times. Thanks for the comment, Kelly!
May I suggest you adopt a kitten. This will give you a “junior cat” to keep your senior cat (and you) company. At some point time will take Mew to kitty heaven and you will be devastated. At that time the kitten (who’ll be a cat then) should be promoted to senior cat and given a younger sibling.
Oooh I’d love to have another kitty, but it might have to wait awhile. His breed is expensive and I’m not sure my boyfriend would be on board with 2 cats! He likes the one, but I think I’ll have to wear him down.
Glad you found your pet. I’m a pet owner, a small dog can’t imagine losing her!
As for your job, try to detach who you are from what you do. I had a cool job, but my answer to people when asked what I do for work, was office work. Play it down. Instead of possibly blinding people to who you really are, your personality stands on its own merit, those accolades never end. I couldn’t care less what people “do”. I care what people “are”. So when I quit my job I had no reservations, it was a means to an end.
That is a fabulous response! I’ll have to try that!
I’m so glad he came home! It’s crazy how some cats will react like that and flee from you instead of returning to safety. My kitty got out one day and I had no idea; I came home to see him just sitting on the front stoop. He looked up at me and meowed and I was so proud of him for waiting outside and not running away lol.