To the casual observer, he might seem well adjusted and happy living with my family. But the more I really think about it, the more I believe he is trying to survive a life of captivity, one from which he may never be free.
Granted, life is a precious gift for my dear Moshe. He was a
foundling on the doorstep at the vet’s office, delivered to them in a small
shoe box, holes punched in the sides, duct taped to trap him inside. He came to live with us soon after his
abandonment, and while he was understandably skittish at first, he never really
outgrew that constant level of fear. You
can see that fear in his eyes, constantly bulging and darting around, like he may
flee at any moment. Plus, he has some serious trust issues.
Moshe is now seven. He has been confined inside my house for
seven years. He leaves only for check-ups at the vet’s office, which means he is
even more frightened to leave the house than he is being trapped inside. Better
the devil you know, I suppose. 
Sometimes we just manage his health without actually taking
him for an exam, like when he threw up repeatedly last week in an effort to
purge a hairball or disagreeable insect he ingested. That episode involved me yelling at him,
tossing him out of my bedroom, and eventually rubbing a thick and smelly paste
on his arm, one that he was forced to remove by licking it off. It was a bitter
pill for him to swallow, if he could swallow pills.
Most of the time, he is free to roam the interior of the
house as he wishes. Usually, he takes advantage of that freedom to hide. He
likes to hide under beds, in closets, and when he was younger and thinner,
inside the furniture through a secret tunnel in the lining under the couch. In fact, when he was a kitten and began
perfecting his disappearing act, we thwarted his efforts by having the first
knuckle of each toe removed. If that isn’t torture, I don’t know what is.
I am now convinced all that hiding is in an effort to get a
moment’s respite from us, his captors. Usually when he hides, he sleeps. He is
probably exhausted from trying to anticipate when the next random torture
session will occur. He has to be ever vigilant, constantly seeking out new and
more secretive hiding places.
No matter how well he hides, we can find him, and when we
do, we don’t leave him alone. We pick him up. We carry him around. He force him
to sit on our laps, sometimes holding him still until he gives up the fight and
purrs softly and deceptively, waiting for us to loosen our grip on him so he
can dash off to safety.
Our endless assaults on him happen at all hours of the day.
He has no peace. Sometimes we make him play patty cake. Sometimes we hold him
draped across our arms like a baby. All the while, we shove our phones in his
face and snap pictures of him against his will. It is not unlike what happened
in Abu Ghraib, only without the car batteries. He even has a series of
humiliating outfits he must endure, a shark fin, a Halloween dinosaur head
piece, a sailor’s collar, even a fake neck tie. The torment never ceases.
He is unable to read or write, so he is limited in his
ability to articulate what his internment means to him. Mostly, he chews off
the handles of the shopping bags. It is his form of civil disobedience. He is
also partial to certain types of shoelaces. And pissing on the floor, just
outside of the litter box, so that it looks like an accident. Take that, my
jailers, he must think to himself. He also likes to rub his face on every
available surface, marking them with a cat’s version of invisible ink. I was
here, it says. My life matters. I want to be perfectly clear: I love this cat, my Moshe. I am his number one fan. In turn, he has either developed his own version of love for me, or he is the best damn cat actor since Morris. We have a certain understanding. I know that whenever I feel the need for feline company, I can force him to cooperate with my snuggles. He knows that despite being fed the same bland food pellets day in and out, he can count on me providing them. He knows if he behaves, he might even get a special kind of pellet in the mornings as well as the regular ones that he has to eat out of a bowl on the floor, a bowl he shares with another abducted victim who has been trapped in the house for even longer, eleven years.
It seems that in addition to maybe loving me, he definitely
loves his food. There is never a time
that the crinkling of a foil lined package fails to rouse him from the most
secluded spot. He can detect the opening
of the deli meat drawer from the deepest sleep. In short, Moshe eats his
feelings.
I can’t tell if I should feel badly for my victim. He is one
in a series of such captives I have had over the course of my life, and chances
are pretty good he won’t be the last. I doubt I’m the first abductor who feels
the love I have outweighs the life of misery and fear I’ve caused. I don’t know if this “relationship” is healthy
for either one of us, but I do know that I just can’t quit him. All I have to
do is look into his wide, vacant eyes, and I am a captive of his little soul,
if he has one.
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