Imsa Kitty

When I was eight months pregnant with our first child, my then husband did something so horrifying, it shattered every illusion I held about him, confirming with utter clarity who he really was. I was devastated.

We had two cats at the time and they began howling at one another from the next room. My drunken husband went charging in. There was a commotion. When he came back he said, “I broke Imsa’s leg trying to separate them.” Imsa was my cat, a solid white, gentle, ethereal beauty I’d had since she was a kitten. 

My mind conjured a vision of a crying child, an intolerant drunk jerking or shaking her in anger and the dire consequences left in his wake. I knew in that moment, with every motherly instinct that I possessed, he could never be allowed to be alone with my child. My heart raced, nausea roiled in my gut and I wept. Wept for the daughter in my womb and for the sweetest cat in the world who didn’t deserve to be in pain.

As a victim of domestic violence from a previous relationship, that moment tilled the soil and once again sowed the seed of fear that only an abuse survivor could fully understand—turning the safety off my fight-or-flight trigger, always on alert, always ON when he was around. 

Imsa had to be rushed to the emergency vet, by me, to be detoxed from the Tylenol the dumbass gave her for the pain (Tylenol is toxic for cats if you didn’t know and she almost died) and she had pins put in her leg, so suffice it to say, like me, she was not the same after. We wound up rehoming her to a nice lady who didn’t have any other pets or children. I hope with everything in me, that Imsa got the life and love she so dearly deserved.