Dear Lauren:

Regarding the stray cat: she wiggles out of your grasp. Plenty of sober people’s grasp is not strong enough for a cat to escape. So as far as that cat goes, your drinking did not cause her death. it was an accident.

Regarding your own cat: she may not be at all affected by the introduction of the stray cat.

The event is a tragedy and the sight was horrible, I have no doubt. It is not a sight one forgets easily. But pay attention: there are a few factors here that are not connected:

* your drinking- you did not drink and drive and then had an accident. You took a stray cat home to feed. Lots of people do that, and drinking has nothing to do with it.

*your grasp of the cat- cats wiggle out of lots of people’s grasp, very often. You probably didn’t want to fight against her escaping your grasp by holding too fight and hurting her.

*the cat, being a stray cat, was already in danger of being run over, compared to house cats. The timing of it included you being right there watching it.

We can never predict what will happen randomly following our decisions. For example: I take my walk this afternoon (right after this post), I walk by this house (no way to avoid it) with Lucy, a dog outside. She is so happy to see me she runs into the street (true happening so far) and gets hit by a car (didn’t happen). Did I cause her demise? After all if I didn’t walk, she wouldn’t run to meet me and she wouldn’t be hit… not that day. (And if I walked drunk by that house, that would have nothing to do with the results)

anita