The day I almost got reported to the RSPCA

 

One day, when I was about ten years old and my sister was about seven, we found a kitten in our back yard.
Here's the thing.
We were pet-deprived.

We had owned a budgie that mysteriously flew away from his cage when he was catching some fresh air in the garden. So we were told. Years later, Mum confessed that it died and she didn't want us to be sad. Little did she know that, for months afterwards, I would stand outside with my head back and look for the wayward budgie in the tall trees by our fence line. Kind of like when I was twelve and mum was pregnant, until Dad told us that she "lost" the baby, and then I hoped for a long time that she would find it again. True story.

So we found a kitten. And we wanted it so badly that we played with it in the tree house that Dad built for us in those tall trees. When we had to go in the house for dinner we left the kitten in the tree house so that we could play with it the next day. I don't think we even left a saucer of milk for the poor little thing, as we would never have been able to sneak it out of the house without Mum knowing.

The next day, I believe, was Sunday. And, even from within the house, as we donned our Sunday clothes, we could hear a loud caterwauling coming from some place in the back garden. As Mum and Dad puzzled about where the sound could be coming from, Anne and I shivered in our shoes, dreading being discovered in our misdeed. I can't imagine why we were so scared, because we were quite doted upon, but scared we were.
Eventually, of course, the sound was tracked to the tree house and the kitten was released. The mother in me thinks that there must have been a mess to clean up, but I don't think we had any part of it.

I remember my Dad was angry. He threatened to report us to the RSPCA. I was mortified and repentant and probably mad that I didn't get to keep the kitten.

I don't know why the incident has stayed with me. I still remember the dread of that morning, knowing that we were about to be discovered but hoping that there was somehow a way out of it. If I could have, I would have sneaked down the path to the tree house and let the kitten out, but there was no way to do it without being seen. Ours was not the kind of home where our parents were ever unaware of our doings.

Why am I telling you this story? I don't know really, except it occurs to me that Mum and Dad had no concept of what was going on in our little undeveloped minds. Of how we longed for a pet that we could cuddle or how we knew that what we had done was wrong but somehow couldn't help ourselves. And that there was no way that we had the courage to confess to the misdeed, even though things would have gone better for us if we had. And how I perpetuated this trend when my kids were growing up and how I wish I had been self-aware enough to encourage them to explore and discuss their feelings without condemning them for it.

Parental guilt.
I wonder if it ever goes away?
Maybe that's why I'm always working at being the world's best Nana.