The Truth Revealed

It may have been when I was in college, or possibly not too much time after I graduated. My father had been taking care of my kitty, Ace, since my brother and I were no longer at home and my mother moved to California. You see, my father isn’t exactly fond of cats, or any pet for that matter. Well, Frodo, the other cat, had died a few years prior due to kitty cancer. It was all very sad.

One day, my father emailed me to tell me that Ace, depressed after Frodo’s untimely death years hence, had run away. He told my brother and I that he looked for him every night for several days, and just as myseriously he returned about a week later. Okay, I thought. Cats generally know how to find their way home.

A few weeks later, Ace ran away again. While looking for him, my dad heard a weak meow coming from the sewers. He determined that the cat was stuck underground.

My father’s pretty resourceful, and his training and experience as an environmental engineer led him to the conclusion that if he went several hundred yards away, to the point where the sewer opens up, he would be able to call Ace, and possibly the cat would move towards the familiar voice.

Well, that was the plan, but suffice it to say it didn’t work despite numerous attempts. Ace was never to be seen or heard again.

Well, that was the story. A few months ago I was eating dinner with my father, his girlfriend and her two kids. Somehow we got on the subject of pets—probably due to the hatred between my father and his girlfriend’s dog—and she (the girlfriend, not the dog) referred to the fact that my father, no friend of pets, put Ace to sleep and misled my brother and me. She must have been under the impression that by now, he would have fessed up to it, but up until that point, it was still my belief that the story my father told was true. I guess it doesn’t surprise me thinking about the reality of it years later.