a response from kim murphy, l.a. times:

our mom got furry hacked off after reading about the womanbean who found her kitty after 9 weeks trapped in the window seat, which zoolatry, karl an' skeezy made known to us inna bloggysphere. so she wroted this to the bean:

YOU feel blessed? You darn well oughta feel ashamed. BESS is the one who is blessed, and NOT by you, but by G*d. It would be a sin if you EVER get another pet. They're not just "things" that "come and go", to be "picked up". They're living beings with minds and feelings who live, feel happiness, and suffer--just like humans.

The thing that sticks in my craw is that you wrote this in an attempt at levity. I can hardly think of anything more pitiful.

Irately (still, two days after first reading the article),

Cheryl C. Pierce
Springfield, MO

well, by golly, here is her response:

Hi Cheryl,

I think a lot of people were similarly upset by my story (though thankfully, many also saw through to what was originally intended, a testimonial to the amazing spirit and power of one Small Cat.)

I am pasting below a response I wrote up to help explain things a little bit more than my story did.

Also, let me give you an update: Bess has recovered nearly all of her eyesight, and most of her old spunk. She is racing around the kitchen and pouncing on her catnip mouse, and resuming her old habit of burying her face in the crook of my elbow when she wants to wind down. (I wish I had an elbow sometimes...) I think she's going to be fine.

Kim


Here's what I wrote yesterday:

I have gotten many wonderful emails from people about my story of Bess, and a whole lot from readers who were shocked at what happened to Bess, and my lousy record of pet ownership.
I am sending this out in an attempt to explain what happened, and why I wrote the story as I did.
Many of you will dismiss this as a sorry attempt to make excuses. Well, it is.
Let me start by saying that none of these reactions came as a surprise to me. As a lifelong cat lover (I find I am someone who likes animals better than people in many ways) there is no way I would have put all that in the story without knowing how many people (such as myself) would react.
I can tell you that none of the horrors that have gone through your mind can match those that have inhabited mine. Why didn't Bess meow? I've gone through it a million times. Did she leap in there while someone was getting a blanket out and then get hit on the head as the door was closing? Did she run quickly out of oxygen and go into a semi-comatose state? Did one of the children at the barbecue accidentally close her in a door or step on her, and then hide her in the cabinet because they were afraid to admit what happened? (I can tell you that while I described these as "blowout" parties in the story, they were not as many of you seem to imagine alcohol-fueled orgies. They were big dinner parties with lots of laughter and kids and Van Morrison on the iPod, the kind of events where the cats usually get cuddled and played with and which one would hardly expect would be a menacing event.
Why in the hell didn't I look in the windowseat? I went on every possible lost cat website, and every one of them told you to search your own house and outbuildings immediately. We looked under beds, in closets, in the kitchen cabinets, and called her name all over the house. We open the windowseat perhaps twice a year. It just never occurred to me that she could possibly be in there, particularly since she had been seen the night of the barbecue. I was simply SURE she had escaped the house, because of the open window in the guest room, and I knew those coyotes were in the woods very nearby.
As far as my history with cats, I have no appetite for making excuses, other than to tell you that I have always been a loving and careful steward of my cats. Amanda's foray hiding behind the dryer happened at the home of my friend while I was gone on vacation, and of course she was none the worse for her period of seclusion. Mario was locked out on the balcony by my husband, after I had already gone down to the car. We had an iron-clad rule in the house not to leave the balcony door open when the cats were roaming free in the house, and my husband violated that rule one evening when I was at the office, thinking Peter was asleep in my daughter's room. We got screens the next day--miserably, lamely, a day too late. Marie was closed in the dryer by my idiot Russian housekeeper, again, while I was at work (she, too, was OK despite it.) Katya was allowed to go outside and did escape our yard and got hit by a bus, and I am single-handedly responsible for this. I shouldn't have let her go outside. I let her and Kolya out in our garden in London because they literally begged at the door, and seemed gloriously happy when they were let out, miserable when they were not. Nonetheless, I made a decision after that to never again let my cats go outside.
I included the litany of cat tragedies in my story about Bess as a means of full disclosure. If I was going to write about what happened to Bess--which happened in my house, to my cat, and which ultimately, like all of it, was MY FAULT--then I needed to face up to what had happened in the past. I didn't include it to minimize the tragedies that had befallen our cats in the past, every one of which brought unending tears to my family, I can't even tell you how many, though I wrote about it in a glosssed-over way for purposes of this Christmas story. I needed to include evidence of our family's past sins, I think, to show just how big a miracle happened to us. We deserved the grace of Bess's survival less than anyone I know. And yet it happened. I am humbled and awed and deeply, deeply thankful.

Kim

it doesn't make us any happier to know the back-story, but we rejoice to know that bess is better, and that the bean realizes that this WAS a big deal, not a witty story. yes, we is bloody-minded an' inflexible when it comes to stupidity, neglect, an' cruelty that results in critters suffering. we happily admits it, an' will nefur change.