when you hook up with a cheater

The phone rang at 8:00 sharp. The Sober Husband answered it. "Oh, we haven't seen Bob in ages. Oh. Uh-huh. No, we haven't seen him in days." It was our neighbor, the one who poached my cheating cat off me.

I got out of bed and went downstairs. "Here, let me talk to him." The Sober Husband was more than happy to hand the phone over to me. It turns out that my ex-cat, Bob has been spending a lot of time away from his new home, but he usually stops by around 4 AM for an early breakfast. (I suspect that the obese Bob spends a lot of time in the middle of the night entering every house in the neighborhood which has a cat door and eating whatever he finds. When I've had insomnia, I've seen him sneaking meals here). His new owner was so worried that he had decided to pull an all-nighter to wait up for Bob, watching Tivoed CSI episodes to stay up.

While we were on the phone, the cat-poacher consulted with me about an injury to Bob's tattered ear. "He got in a fight with that white cat again." It felt as though he were angling for me to volunteer to take Bob to the vet, but I resisted. I've paid thousands to patch up that animal from his fights over the years and am happy to hand off that part of Bob's ownership. If he's purring in someone else's lap, that person can take him to the vet to have his ear examined.

The cat reportedly made his entrance during this phone call. "He stays up all night and calls us at eight, and then the cat walks in," said the Sober Husband with disgust.

To me it felt tacky and unseemly that Bob's new owner would call ME to discuss his feelings and concerns about Bob going missing. Wouldn't that remind him of, say, how Iris and I felt when he was snuggling down with Bob in those early cheating days? We shook our heads and settled down to coffee, newspapers, and providing bowls of cereal for the children.