Mamma Kitty was the most gorgeous cat I have ever seen. She had piercing green eyes and soft reddish fur. Only three of her legs operated and the fourth would drag around behind her just like a twig stuck to her fur. My mother always believed her former owners had been abusive and took out their anger on the poor cat. This might have explained why Mamma Kitty was the biggest bitch ever.

We first met Mamma Kitty when we lived to Sacramento. The cat came around while we played in a broken old stale hot tub in the backyard. From the first time we met her everyone was enamored by her beauty. The cat would hobble to our house which she could now rely on as a constant food source and let my mother pet her. In return Mamma Kitty would kill mice and lay half of their remains on the stoop where she would proceed to bang her head into the sliding glass door until my mother would come over and recognize her gifts laying there convulsing in their blood. My siblings and I were alarmed by these morbid gifts, but my mother would stand there and applaud her then reward her with an exquisite petting sessions. They had a strange connection, the cat and my mom. So when we moved to Tahoe my mom decided we were taking the cat with us. We transported her in a makeshift cage, two laundry baskets taped together with packaging tape.

When we first moved in the cat sat under my parents’ bed all day long, and wait for the next idiot to come in and fall victim to her deranged animal instincts. Once you stood close enough to the bed and demonstrated that you weren’t moving for a couple seconds, the cat would jet out and claw your foot. The pain was brief but there was always a scratch mark that lingered on the foot, a constant reminder to stay away from my parent’s bed. I suppose one day the cat decided the minor scratches were not powerful enough to validate her domination over the household so the cat started venturing out of my parents’ room, giving people false hopes of being in her good graces.

I still distanced myself from her. When Mamma Kitty would enter my room in the middle of the night waking me up by tromping over my bed I would scream in terror. The idea of that cat clawing my eyes out was too much to handle, so I would have to wake my mom up and have her remove the cat from my premises. Instances like these informed the cat I was an easy target.

One night I was feeling sorry for the poor cat sitting outside my parents’ bedroom, meowing to be let inside, so I decided to open the door where she could return to her thrown under my parents’ bed. I tried the handle but the door was locked. I was a master snoop, and had figured out how to pick all the locks in the house with my fingernail, so I proceeded to do this. I picked the lock and swung the door open for Her Royal Highness to enter. From there I was confronted with the most astounding picture I have ever seen. My father jumped out from nowhere holding a crumpled t-shirt in front of him screaming broken, nonsensical sentences and then the door slammed in my face. I stood there staring at the door in complete and total shock. The cat was gone, and I was there looking like the classic fool.

Too traumatized to return to my brothers and sisters, I went to my room where I laid in bed and stared at the stucco on the ceiling. Initially I was scared that my father would come and yell at me for being so stupid as to not acknowledge a locked door, but when I saw he sent my mother instead I knew this was going to be an incredibly awkward and unpleasant situation. My family, the typical brush everything under the carpet and forget about it people, believe that meaningless conversation can mend any wound. The conversation is a gesture of your ability to forget what has just happened, as long as you promise never to speak of it again. I was fine with this, and wanted to get it over with as fast as possible. We both didn’t mention the humungous scar that had instantly developed from my shock, but talked about Rosanne and the new books we were reading. I was so embarrassed for her, and wanted her to leave, but being the loving mother she is, she had to come and make sure her third born had not died from a cardiac arrest.

My parents tried very hard to exemplify a relationship where each of them was unhappy, and now I knew they actually did like each other. I felt betrayed. I learned my entire raunchy vocabulary from their frequent battles, and now the words had lost their powerful meanings. How had they been able to fool us for so long? I was unable to make sense of what seemed to be the biggest domestic cover up I would ever discover. I slowly accepted that my parents did like each other, and even began to think of their fights as political rallies. The slogan “Workaholic Asshole” translated to “Vote Matriarch” and “Fucking Spaghetti” actually meant “Vote Patriarch.” My siblings and I were amidst the longest running campaign ever in existence. It was a strategy working to both their benefit. No one ever dominated the throne too long and their loyal subjects were completely dumfounded as to which party to side with. I suppose they had us eating out of the palm their hand.

Later that night Mamma Kitty entered my room. She sauntered all around my bed, and was insistent on making me notice her presence. The cat knew I was incapable of getting my mother to make her get that damn cat off my bed. I had become helpless. The cat had now conquered my room; I became a new claimed country to her. All I could do was cover my head with a pillow and try to make myself fall asleep.

Mamma Kitty was smarter than most and after awhile when the she did not come in my room anymore I realized she had set me up, not as a way to make my room yet another conquest, but she wanted to teach me a cruel life lesson that one can only learn from such a dreadful experience. From that day forward I was a changed girl, because I learned something that only a few people find out at my age; never trust a bitch, not even a gorgeous crippled one.