I subscribe to the Butterfly Effect theory which basically says if a butterfly flaps its wings somewhere, it affect things that happen elsewhere based on how other organisms react to the initial action. If a bug splatters on a windshield, it could cause the driver to turn on the windshield spray and wipers which could then lead to the driver being distracted by a temporary loss of clear vision/concentration, which in turn could lead to that person rear-ending a vehicle in front of them. There’s no direct proof that the bug splattering on the windshield was the direct cause of the accident but you never know. Maybe the driver was impaired. Perhaps the driver was distracted by a crying child in the backseat and they turned their head around at a crucial time. Maybe the driver was simply changing a CD and not paying attention to the road. Regardless, to me the splattered bug had an impact on the future events of the occupants in those cars.
I mention all this because of something that occurred this weekend. Our old cat had died almost 2 years ago and at some point in the past year I had promised Ally we would get another cat by the time her 5th birthday rolled around (end of July). As a kid, promises made by your parents are ingrained into your brain. I’m sure we all remember promises made by our parents that were never followed through on for whatever reason (or maybe it’s just me).
One of Megan’s ex-coworkers has a cat that gave birth to a litter a few months ago. For several reasons not worth going into here, we couldn’t take a kitten at the time but her friend held onto a cute orange kitten that Ally fell in love with. The agreement was to take the kitten after a specified time. Ally even had named the cat Tie Dye because of its markings. For reasons unknown to us, she added a middle name last week – Lincoln. Yep – Tie-Dye Lincoln Kirkpatrick – Boy Cat Extraordinaire.
The plan initially was for Megan to pick up the cat from her friend’s place after she worked her shift on Saturday. Here is where the Butterfly Effect began to creep into this scenario. The only reason Megan was working on a weekend day was to make up for vacation time she hadn’t accrued prior to us going to Tybee Island last week. In addition, I wasn’t aware of a code release my company was having which requires the team to be online and testing around 3:30 AM until about 7 AM. I'm sure I knew but had totally forgot after a week of relaxing on the beach.
Because I had to be up so early, combine that with taking care of two girls who don’t nap at the same time you want them to, and I knew I’d be a zombie by the time Megan got home from work at 6 PM (her shift started at 7 AM). Since her friend’s house is over an hour away from ours, I didn’t want her to do that on the same day since that would wipe us both out physically. Add the excitement of introducing an animal to the family right around bedtime and it simply wasn’t feasible to pick the cat up on Saturday.
On Sunday, the proverbial butterfly was flapping its wings mightily. With about an hour before they were about to leave, Megan’s friend called to tell us the cat was missing. They searched everywhere and even drove all around since they live in the boonies and the cat could be anywhere. As of today, the cat is still missing. Who knows what the cat’s fate really is but you could assume the worst. There’s a chance the mother might have hid the kitten since her other 2 children were given away and she spent a lot of time looking for them on each occurrence. On Sunday morning, the mother act acted normally. To us, this means either that she hid the kitten off premises or she witnessed the kitten meeting an unsavory fate. We’d like to think it was the former but the reality of nature implies the latter probably happened.
As a parent, you hate to see your child bawl their eyes out over a heartbreaking scenario like this where the child is really looking forward to something. Ally was inconsolable, which made for a very sad Father’s Day morning. My heart ached because I knew she was really looking forward to getting this particular cat and had met it twice.
This is the point in the story where I blame the damn butterfly. It’s a hodgepodge of “Woulda, Coulda, Shouldas”. Had I known about my Saturday work duties prior to me leaving on vacation, Megan would never have scheduled her Saturday shift. Had I not had to be up at 3:30 in the morning, the impact of her Saturday shift wouldn’t have mattered as much and she could have picked up the cat after work when it was still around the house. Had Megan had enough vacation days accrued prior to our time off, she wouldn’t have even had to consider working a Saturday shift. No one is to blame here; rather it was the prefect set of circumstances that led me to all this rumination.
The bottom line that bothers me, even though it’s out of my control, is that had we not had work responsibilities, would a cute little cat still be alive (assuming it met a morbid fate)? Maybe the cat will eventually show up but the damage is done. Ally will get over it; we’ll eventually get some kind of cat regardless, and life will go on. But my heart broke once I saw Ally’s eyes and the realization set in that Tie Dye wasn’t going to be hers because he was missing. That first gesture of a child's closed eyes about ready to gush with tears, complete with the open mouth that is silent but ready to let out a burst of crying in about 10 seconds or so, followed by 15+ minutes of unabashed wailing really made for a somber start to my Father’s Day this year.
To recap all this in one sentence would go something like this – “My work killed a kitten.”
Stupid butterflies.