Poetry, Essay, Grief

I Left my Beloved Cats in my Best Girlfriend’s Charge When I Went to Alaska

I came home to one dead cat, one injured cat, damage to my home, a web of lies and unimaginable grief

I just wonder — does she have any comprehension of the pain she has caused, or of the horror that my baby must have felt in those last moments facing a bobcat’s jaws?

I just can’t get that picture out of my head — the terror. It’s incomprehensible.

Only a monster could do such a thing. A human monster, is what I mean.

A monster who knew him since he was twelve weeks old, yet decided that a party (that she wasn’t supposed to have) in a home that wasn’t hers was more important than his safety.

Devastated. And aching. I want to feel his weight in my arms just one more time, to look into those liquid jade eyes and to feel the throb of love at his core.

I’m having a really hard time comprehending that he’s gone. My Emerson. My Emerson. How can you not be here?

You should be asleep — you were so narcoleptic — at the foot of the bed, after double dinner and chasing your sister through the tunnel and tissue paper and the peacock feathers on the Turkish rug — the one you used to pee on, but just a little, in the corner. You were the alpha, after all.

He came back last night — that bobcat. Uma went ballistic. She screamed like a banshee from inside the window. I know she tried to save you that night, when you weren’t supposed to be outside.

Her shoulder’s still not right and she’s on pain medication. But she’s patrolling the windows. She’s the new alpha.

We’re cranky and sad and I miss you so much that my heart hurts and sometimes I can’t breathe.

How did this happen? Your auntie — I guess she never really was, but I’ll not sully your memory with all of that.

Just know that we love you you and the hot tears come hard. You should still be here, my precious Emerson.

It is still so hard to get through the days without collapsing into a sobbing mess for the the loss of my beloved Emerson. I have always felt like Emmie and I connected on a very deep soul level. Every morning he loved to be held like a baby in our special chair while he nuzzled in my hair and gazed into my eyes. I’m not sure who needed that more, him or me. My arms, literally, ache for him and I keep thinking that I see him out of the corner of my eye.

Betrayal, by a friend, at the deepest level

Emerson, and all of us, were betrayed at the deepest level I can imagine by someone who I thought was my best girlfriend, someone who had known Emmie since he was twelve weeks old. Rebecca threw a party at our home (without our permission and with people we do not know) on a Sunday afternoon/into the night while we were in Alaska. I don’t know for sure how many people were here, but my neighbor says that she thinks that there were four or five cars parked in the street and that it sounded like about fifteen people.

I came home to find that my cat was likely eaten by a bobcat that night (I found her post on Next Door about a missing cat the next day, although she concocted a story about him going missing and finding his fur a full day later) and we found bobcat scat in the yard a few days after we got home.

My other kitty, Uma, had such a severe shoulder sprain that she could barely walk. My gardener found Uma limping around in the garden at eight-thirty in the morning on Monday, the day after the party (way too early for kitties to be outside). Rebecca tried to fabricate a story that Uma’s shoulder injury came from a tiff with Emerson later that afternoon, on Monday, and says she didn’t notice Uma limping until Tuesday. But, given the fact that Uma was already injured on Monday morning, Emerson was most likely already dead by the time she says they had the tiff. She also took a photo of our other kitty, Freyja, at 1:30 that afternoon, in her kitty cup, with the message — “nap time” — presumably to cover her tracks.

It was so calculated and cold and just utterly bizarre the way she tried to lie her way through this. A few months ago, she was having dinner at our home and Emerson tried to jump up onto a china cabinet that his brother can get up onto, but he could not. He wasn’t big enough to make the jump. He ended up hanging by his claws and I had to rescue him. We laughed a little about how Emmie was jealous that his brother could get up there, but he just couldn’t do it.

Yet, the lie she concocted, which made no sense even in my shocked state when we got home on Wednesday night, was that Emerson jumped up onto the china cabinet and then jumped from there onto the chair Uma was sitting in. Even Bisou could not make a leap that big. She said she thought that was how Uma’s shoulder was injured. I questioned it, but she just said, “well, he did.” When I found out that Uma’s shoulder was already injured at 8:30 that morning, I knew, in my gut, that something was really wrong.

I hadn’t figured out yet just how “off” this story was.

When we got home, I raced through the house, frantically searching and hoping that Emerson was hiding somewhere. I opened my closet door (which had been closed while we were away) and found that all of the family photos on the walls were askance and two of them were on the floor. There was also a lone tassel on the floor.

I asked what had happened. I first wondered if the cats had been fighting in there. But the door had been closed and the photos that fell were five feet off the ground. Her reply was just weird. She said, “I noticed this when I was looking for Emmie and I just thought, ‘well, Erika is doing some redecorating.’” It made no sense. But I was in shock. I later realized that the tassel was from a pair of my pants. I’m guessing some inebriated party guests were in my closet trying on my clothes.

Rebecca did not take Uma to the vet for the three days we were still gone. We found bloody claw marks on the couch and on the chair Uma sleeps in. My guess is that she was trying to fight for her brother through the screen door the night that he died. There were large claw punctures in the screen.

I asked why there were no signs up around the neighborhood and I immediately began making some. She says she went door-to-door asking about him. We’ve talked to all of our neighbors — not a SINGLE one of them ever talked to her.

That Monday morning that Tomas found Uma outside early in the morning, the back door was open. Not only was Rebecca not looking for Emerson, she left the doors wide open and went to the climbing gym. He was concerned because she was not back by the time he had to leave. So, she left the other kitties untended and exposed to whatever had killed their brother the night before.

She claims that she “assumed” that Emerson was inside that Monday afternoon and closed the doors at 2:30 and took a nap and then went to teach yoga at 5:15 and then found his fur the next morning and then posted on Next Door. Even if that were the truth (which we know it is not because of the Next Door post from Monday and from Uma’s injuries) it would be bizarre behavior. Who would “assume” that a cat you were in charge of was inside and then lock the door?

For the twenty-five years we have lived here, I’ve let the kitties have a few supervised hours in the fenced-in garden in the middle of the day. They are never out early in the morning and are always in by two or three. They were not to be left alone outside. Emerson must have been terrified at being outside at night. He used to patrol the windows every night for critters.

He was likely locked out of his own home by a drunk and stoned caretaker. Tomas says that there was a very large tequila bottle as well as other alcohol bottles in the kitchen that Monday morning. The patio furniture was also all moved around.

According to the concocted timeline which Rebecca wrote out and texted to me, she searched the yard for Emerson on Tuesday morning and then saw our neighbor, Bev, walking (she knows Bev). She asked Bev to help her look. Bev says that she found it very peculiar that Rebecca went straight to where the fur was in the backyard, just a few feet from the patio and in plain sight, and said, “Oh look, fur.” If she had actually searched the backyard, she would have already seen it.

We suspect that she was sick enough to actually pick up the fur on Monday morning, so that Tomas would not see it, and then put it back down on Tuesday morning to be able to use Bev as an alibi.

She never would have told us about the party. I found out from my neighbor, who said that it was so loud that she almost called us in Alaska. When we returned (three days later), I not only found my closet trashed, the rotisserie for the barbecue was still going. Tomas says that the level of the pool was so low that it took an hour and a half to refill it. And the pool pump was not working.

We also discovered the other day that our glass margarita pitcher was cracked and one of the glasses is missing. It’s a small thing compared to the loss of Emerson, but come on!

Prior signs that I should have paid more attention to:

I’ve always wondered why the hummingbird activity is so decreased when we get back from a trip and she’s watched the cats. I thought maybe she was making it wrong. Taking care of the bird feeders was one of the things she was paid to do. Yes — she was paid. I paid her $1000 to house and cat sit while we were in Alaska.

Tomas told me the other day that she never does refill the hummingbird or other feeders. I guess that explains it. He also says that he has often seen her leave the kitties untended outside while she went to the gym or to yoga — despite explicit instructions not to do so! If I had only known…. She was the only cat sitter I trusted enough to let the kitties outside with at all.

There have been a few other weird things over the years — like the time she was in India with us, as my assistant on a retreat, and I saw her wearing a pair of burnished-bronze Tieks shoes through the cow-dung littered streets of Varanasi. I thought how odd it was that she had the exact same pair of shoes as the ones I had just bought. And I thought, “wow, I’d never wear that nice of a pair of shoes here.”

Well, guess what? When I got home, my Tieks were gone. I chalked it up to maybe getting them mixed up with a pile of clothing that I had given her. I didn’t think they really were in that pile, but I gave her the benefit of the doubt.

Then, there was the time that her daughter (who has some major mental issues) showed up in my kitchen wearing one of my favorite dresses and said, “Thank you for giving my mom so many clothes.” I KNEW that dress hadn’t been in the most recent pile of things I had given her. But I still didn’t put it together.

Then there was the time, just a few months ago, when I took Rebecca and her granddaughter out to lunch and bought Rebecca a pretty compact and her granddaughter a necklace at an antique store. I bought some costume jewelry pins for myself at the same time. One of them looked like Emerson.

When we got home, I put the pins on the kitchen counter. After they left, the Emerson pin was gone.

Antisocial Personality Disorder

I went to a therapist for a couple of visits to try to make some sense of all of this. After showing her Rebecca’s weirdly cold and untruthful texts, she told me that she thinks that Rebecca has antisocial personality disorder. She says that it is about the worst thing you can have and that these people have absolutely no remorse or compassion or empathy. They will lie pathologically to get whatever they want.

I’ve thought about how Rebecca has talked a lot about how her granddaughter does not have empathy (the lack of this is a hallmark of this disorder) and that she is trying to teach her empathy. What I’ve realized (and Rebecca may not even realize this) is that what she has been trying to teach her granddaughter is how to “act” like she has empathy. Rebecca has learned how to do this herself.

The therapist asked me if Rebecca had anything to gain from having a relationship with me. She said, if so, she probably tried really hard to hide her true nature from me.

I’ve thought about this a lot — about the iPhones I’ve given her when I get a new one; about all of the clothes I’ve given her when I clean out my closet; about the mountain bike I gave her when I got a new one.

And most especially, I think about how she rode my coat tails in the yoga community. She mentored with me and came along as my assistant when I taught at festivals or did retreats in India.

And this last reason is maybe the biggest one that made me write this essay. I want to apologize to the yoga community for endorsing her in any way. And I want to warn others about her behavior so that they are not also harmed.

Note — after writing this essay, Rebecca responded to a demand letter my husband sent her. She told him that she did try to get Uma into the vet on Monday and told them that she was a “Burkhalter cat.” She says that they told her that they did not have time to see Uma and to take her to an emergency center (which she did not do). I just spoke to the vet’s office and they said that she did not call and that, even if they were full, they would have put a note in the record about Uma. There is no such note.

And, by the way, we have changed the locks and installed video cameras.

Erika Burkhalter is a yogi, neurophilosopher, cat-mom, photographer, and lover of travel and nature, spreading her love and amazement for Mother Earth’s glories, one photo, poem or story at a time. (MS Neuropsychology, MA Yoga Studies).

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Thank you for reading this tragic story.

Story and photos ©Erika Burkhalter.