INSIDE, I AM SHATTERED

Mrs. Bronx is a Veterinary Technician (think Nurse For A Veterinarian).  
She sometimes gets side jobs, like animal-sitting while an owner is away 
on vacation, or going to their homes to give medical treatments to sick 
pets.  This week, she's been doing both in one.  Her boss is away for a 
few days, and has a sick dog.  She asked Mrs. Bronx to go stop by twice 
a day and feed the menagerie (2 very large parrots, three dogs, and a 
cat).  It's one of the dogs that's ill, but it was the cat who had a 
major roll in the dramas of the day.

Now, one of the major issues we have to deal with is that Mrs. Bronx 
can't drive.  I have to take her where ever she needs to go, and, since 
Little Bronx is only seven, he has to come along too.  This is stressful 
on it's own -- more than I often let on to her.  Or, at least, I make a 
point of not nagging her about it.

Be that as it may, today we ended up at this boss lady's house, where, 
at least ostensibly, we have been given the run of the place.  I've been 
taking advantage of their high-speed Internet connection, for instance.  
Mrs. Bronx has been looking after the animals, and Little Bronx has been 
having a ball playing with their dogs.  He also likes their television.  
We don't have TV at our house, so watching "Spongebob" off the air, as 
opposed to off a rented DVD, is a treat for him.  So this is the setup: 
Mrs. Bronx is outside feeding the dogs, which requires her close 
attention, since the sick one has medicine in his bowl that he needs to 
take, and he hasn't been eating much to begin with; I'm at a table, 
downloading distros while I have the opportunity; and Little Bronx is 
dividing his time between the dogs outside, and his show on the TV 
inside.  At one point, Mrs. Bronx comes inside, asking him about the 
front door, which he'd forgotten to shut in one of his manic trips back 
and forth.  He doesn't know how long it's been open.  Okay, but where's 
the cat...?

Seems like Pussy made a break for it, and Pussy is an indoor former 
foster animal.  We'd yelled at Little Bronx a dozen times, on different 
occasions, to shut the door.  But we weren't watch him closely, and an 
animal in my wife's care went missing.  Well, Little Bronx is difficult 
to deal with in a crisis, wanting to "help", when all we want to do is 
scream him.  Really, it's hard to describe the anger that wells up at 
those times, anger that has grown like a pernicious and particularly 
aggressive weed in an otherwise barren field.  As he interfered with the 
search, he was sent to the car, to wait.  As he is the kid he is, he 
couldn't wait in the car, and kept getting out to try and explain, or 
apologize, or help us in the search.  In fact, he did try and find the 
cat early on, but it degenerated into conflict, as it always seems to.

Okay, so, he's in the car sobbing over his fate and that of the cat, I'm 
walking the fence line of this rather sizable chunk of heavily-brushed 
property, and Mrs. Bronx is scouring the area closer to the house.  
Eventually, Little Bronx, having been crying by himself for a good 
while, got out and asked if he could sing us a song he'd made up.  
Sobbing almost hysterically, he sings the following:

Inside, I am shattered
I don't know where the cat is
I left the door open and he got out
But my heart is shattered and I'm sorry

We eventually found that the cat was hiding under the house, in an 
opening in the foundation (the husband to the boss is one of those 
fix-em-up handyman types who starts a hundred projects a year and 
finishes about two, so he's still working on the foundation twenty years 
after they moved in).  Well, it's just fucking impossible to get down 
there, so my wife tries to lure the cat out with food.  She succeeds for 
a while, but the cat is skittish as hell now, and tries to attack us 
every time we get near, and keeps running back under the house.  And 
Little Bronx keeps getting out to "help", scaring the cat off again.  
Well, this is maddening.  Add to it all the weather, which has been 
unseasonably cold and snowy (I mean, it's May, for god's sake).  Mrs. 
Bronx calls the boss, who is generally laid back and cool with her, and 
is about this too, but she has no advice for us.  Finally, it's getting 
late.  We have to get Little Bronx home, get some dinner in him, and 
then begin the torturous process of getting him to bed; and Mrs. Bronx 
is standing outside with just a sweater on, as snow falls all around.  I 
played like the Great Patriarch then, and ordered us to leave.  She 
could put down food and water for the cat, but we had to go, and try 
again on the morrow.  That didn't sit well, but it was necessary, and I 
still stand by it.

Tomorrow, we'll go out and drop off Mrs. Bronx, and Little Bronx and I 
will go out geocaching or something, and she'll try to get that cat out 
from under the house with some peace and quiet -- assuming it's still 
under there by then.  It occurs to me now that we could have blocked off 
the hole, somehow (there's PLENTY of junk lying around which would have 
served -- I may phlog just about that some day), but because I'm only 
clever after the fact, there's no guarantee the animal will even be 
around come the morning.

I don't give two shits about this cat, truth be told, except where there 
may be recriminations for Mrs. Bronx at her job -- and, especially where 
the memory of this incident, and of his parent's nearly-violent 
reactions to it. may haunt Little Bronx in future time.  Because he's 
old enough to remember this incident forever.  And if he was made to 
feel like a screw-up here, where will it end?  Where will all these many 
incidents with him end?  All the time, I hear people say how kids can 
get over anything, That kids are tough, that they're resilient.  Well, 
not in my experience.  Little Bronx is sensitive.  Deeply so.  Maybe 
more than I ever was, and I was an intense little kid.  No, he's 
fragile, and brilliant, and troubled.  And his parents sometimes freak 
out over somebody else's goddamn cat squatting under their goddamn 
house.  And sometimes our boy sings to us of his pain.  And don't I just 
feel like the biggest shit-heal on Earth, as he weeps for this cat, and 
Mrs. Bronx buries her fury for a moment to hold him and kiss him?  Don't 
I just feel like a tyrant and a schoolyard bully for yelling at him to 
keep put, which is something he really, really can't do?

Inside I'm shattered too, I guess.  Shattered and hiding under a 
stranger's house.