All the clues were there waiting to be put together.  A few pebbles on the rug, some idle leaves plucked in their prime creating a small path, and Cat was nowhere to be seen.  All his favorite hiding places lay blinking in the sudden light of my flashlight, empty of anything that moved.  He had found yet another new place to hide.  A sure sign of his guilt.

When I finally found him, he blinked his pooky eyes as if waking from a nap.  But his subterfuge did not fool me.  The missing newly planted seedling screamed from the grave.  It had taken a long time, patience, understanding to teach Cat that his edible plants were in the solid gray clay bowl on the floor.  Anything higher than his head was off limits.  And he had been pretty good about following the rules.  But yesterday I had done the unthinkable.  I had called him fatty.  In front of Uncle Son.

Now endowed with an apartment I could afford, we actually had food.  Albeit most of it came from the numerous food banks around the city – Nebraska is famous for letting no one go hungry – and our pantry overflowed.  Having arrived here skinny, starving, sick from the ill treatment of the Evergreen state, the last few months had seen us both stuff ourselves at every opportunity.  We were both now pudgies.

Cat had taken it personally.  Used his insulting voice at me.  Nonchalantly bit my knee as he passed by.  It wasn’t a hard bite, just enough needle pricks to let me know he didn’t appreciate my comment.  Then this morning the new seedling was gone.  Uprooted ungraciously.  Violently torn from its former moorage.  A trail of dirt crumbs that stopped, started, stopped in a choppy path all over the front room.

I had looked everywhere.  The seedling had totally disappeared.  Unimaginable as it was, even the roots couldn’t be found.  Cat typically did not have appetite for roots, dirt, flotsam, jetsam.  Even more surprising, his whiskers bore no trace of collateral plant damage.  He hadn’t had enough time to clean his face thoroughly, then quickly fall asleep before I found him.  Then as I bent over to examine him closely, having no wish to punish him before proving his guilt, I saw it.  The seedling dangled as if strung up by a rope.  From the hem of my nightgown.

I had blamed Cat.  But the dirty deed was my own.  How many times had I blamed others in my lifetime for things that were my own fault?  In the dinosaur past when I was the Ginger Temper?  In my impetuous youth.  That mimicked the temper of my mother.  Later my ex.  The anger taught me by those who should have been teaching me useful skills for coping with life.  Only the gentleness of my English grandmother, my sweet Mother-in-law, my ever-patient Japanese sister-in-law, saved me from myself.  The self I had learned to be as a child.

I could only blame others for so many years.  Eventually as an adult I had to take that blame to the person in the mirror.  Because as an adult I had the gift of choice.  And in the end I chose to accept responsibilities for my own actions.  The temper had to go.  I was unmerciful to it.  Tore it from my skill kit as as ruthlessly as I had stomped on ants for being the blame for my childhood poisoning.  And without nourishment, the temper had faded into reason, understanding, patience, more useful tools for my personal skill kit.

I petted Cat back to sleep before standing up to remove the victim from my nightie, placing it back in its pot, hoping it would survive the ordeal.  Deflating  my need to be right to its proper proportion.  Acknowledging the lack of my kitty’s need for human emotions such as carrying grudges.  Reaching deeper into the abyss of dark secrets in my mind, exposing them to the light of understanding.  Liking myself more as a person every day.

Sharing myself with you, Dear Reader, so that your dark secrets don’t lay on you like a layer of rotting trash, don’t smother the goodness in you.  Believe in the goodness of this world.  Be the good.

Hugs.