One thing I have learned about the mourning monster is new loss tends to feed it. Once you have lost someone close to you, a new loss tends to bring back other losses. For instance, we have a lot of pets at my house. We recently lost a python and nearly lost another because they refused to eat, no matter what we did. I think we've saved the second through force feeding and increased care, but it's been a lot of work and stress. On top of that, the pregnant cat we took in so she could have her babies in the safety of a warm home seems to have either reabsorbed or miscarried and eaten her babies. She went from pregnant to not pregnant with no apparent babies or signs of nursing to show for it. Not finding the babies wouldn't be much of a surprise, but she ought to show signs of feeding the babies if they exist.
I have discovered something about myself. When I was a child, my attachment to cats sprang from a mother who did not know how to be involved in my life or to actually parent. She was a stay-at-home mom, but none of her seven kids can reasonably say what she did with her time because none of us remembers much time with her. And it's not that she evenly split her time seven ways because then we'd remember frequent short periods of togetherness. No, lacking knowledge how to turn the word mother into a verb, she didn't. So I grew attached to cats. They gave me the love I craved in a mother.
Now that I have had at least 14 miscarriages, 15 baby deaths in a row and have given up on having babies, I can clearly see my house full of pets is roughly the same thing. I can't just run out and buy a baby, but I can run out and buy a guinea pig or a dog or a snake. That's the charm of country living. I have two older children, but there's an empty space left where I yearn for babies, someone to take care of and love. So for a while, I filled my place with dogs, cats, fish, bunnies, chickens, goats, rats, guinea pigs, lizards, snakes, hamsters... just about any kind of pet you can reasonably keep under normal circumstances. I justified it by saying my kids love animals. Now that I've realized baby replacement is what I'm doing, I'm cutting back on the animals. Their constant care became too much for us. So I've sold off or given away any pet that we don't really and truly love. We're down to several cats, two dogs, the remaining chickens, and two lizards. And I'm not replacing any.
Now that we're down to the animals that we truly love, a loss becomes much harder because it means the loss of a family member. Now, animal loss, even the loss of an animal with which I've had a bond, has nowhere near the impact that baby loss has on me. I am sad but not utterly depressed. However, any loss brings back feelings of sadness, brings back a piece of the big, painful iceberg of loss under the surface. As with child loss, I still press myself on animal loss, wondering what I could have done differently, blaming myself whether it was my fault or not. This is part of why I've had to cut back on animals: because I don't like loss in all its varieties. Too many flashbacks. I imagine I'm not alone in this.
And now, this cat pregnancy loss is really getting to me. I didn't want nor seek another batch of kittens. But now they're gone, I'm really sad about it. It just hits too close to home, feels too familiar. How do you avoid mourning and pain? Just don't love. But for someone like me, I find I just can't do that. So I'm left with the struggle and looking for a way to move on. In other words, back to business as usual.
