Here is a true story once told to me.
When we were married, this woman told me, I had this cat that my husband couldn’t stand. He especially hated the cat jumping on the kitchen table, and he would always sweep her off. Not gently either. It made me think just what kind of person I had married.
One weekend we planned to spend the time at our beach shack.
“I have to work late,” my husband said, “I’ll join you in the Friday evening.”
I arrived during the day and began tidying the shack for the weekend. My cell phone rang. It was my husband.
“I’ve had to work later than expected,” he said. “I won’t be able to make it tonight. I’ll be there in the morning.”
“Fine, I’ll see you then.”
A minute later the phone rang again and my husband’s ID came up on the screen.
“What’s up?” I asked, but he didn’t answer. As I waited for his reply I could hear his voice in the background and I realized he was talking on the house phone to somebody. I could also hear something else – my cat purring loudly into the cell phone mouthpiece.
Obviously, my husband had put his phone down on the kitchen table after the call to me, and my cat had jumped up on the table and pressed the redial button.
“Your phone is still on,” I shouted, but he couldn’t hear me.
Boys are about to give up when I realize that my husband was talking to another woman. Not just any woman but his ex-wife. And he was organizing that evening with her. I killed the connection, my mind whirled, my heart became stone. I hadn’t suspected a thing until my cat had ratted him out.
Somehow I managed to keep my mouth shut for the whole weekend; what was there to say?
After my husband left for work on Monday, I saw my lawyer and filed for divorce.
“Why are you doing this?” my husband cried, when I showed him the paperwork, but I never told him why. He wouldn’t have believed me anyway.
That a cat he’d ill-treated had ratted him out was a step too far, too deliciously apt to be believable.