My cat triggered a repressed memory!

My cat triggered a repressed memory!

I realize that the title to my thread may be a bit hard to swallow. I will start out by saying it was difficult for to me to believe too.

I am going to lay it out for you in a concise picture without embellishment.

There is much more to this than I am going to put forth here.

She was a sweet little black cat I named after my favorite basketball player, MJ.

I got her from a friend while I was living with my girlfriend. After a break-up from said girlfriend, I moved into another friend’s house and took MJ with me.

One day, about 2 weeks after moving into this guy’s house, I started becoming very despondent over my situation.

The relationship I had with my ex-girlfriend did not end well. She was very abusive for the time we were together and was constantly trying to start fights with me.

Then the guy I moved in with turned out to be a degenerate that I was forced to deal with. He wasn’t trying to do anything with me, but he had some very strange habits.

It was grinding on me that I had to rely on someone else to survive.

I decided I had enough. It was time to end it all. My relationship with my own family was very strained for many years.

I went into my guest room and locked the door. I laid down on the guest bed and cried my eyes out. How could I end it? What would be the surest way? I had screwed up so many other things in my life, I didn’t want to screw this up too.

I was staring up at the ceiling, eyes drenched with tears so much I was basically blind at this point and my bed was getting soaked.

I felt this thump on my chest, it was my cat, MJ. She looked at me and put her paws right on my heart. Bam! All of the sudden I had this incredible feeling overtake me.

It was a rush of energy I had never felt before at this point in my life. I had this strange video playback in my head. Everything went in fast reverse to the very day.

What day? The day I became a victim of sex abuse at the hands of a family visitor from another city. They were invited to stay at our house for a religious retreat weekend.

For over 14 years I had lived a life of self destruction filled with alcohol and drug abuse. I never remembered in all this time the very first experience I had with this person. I knew I had a relationship with him. I just never remembered how it all started.

I had blocked that memory all this time and always blamed myself for how I felt about me up to this point. No wonder I hated religion. No wonder I hated my parents. No wonder why I hated authority. No wonder I was self destructive.

It took me exactly 2 minutes from the time I laid down in bed and started crying, until my cat saved my life.

I literally felt more alive and my outlook changed immediately. I no longer wanted to end it all. Instead I had a new focus, now I wanted to kill the s.o.b. that abused me.

Even so, that was an anger I could handle because at least now I knew who it should really be directed at and it wasn’t me.

I went through many months of therapy after this to deal with my anger. Anger I had not just with him, although he is the only one I was eager to put in the ground with a slow agonizing painful death. I had anger for my parents, for my synagogue congregation, for the police and my older sister.

You see they were all at fault for allowing this to take place in some way or another. They were victims too, but they were not abused by this person.

My parents allowed a stranger to stay not just at our house but in my bedroom. My sister insisted they put this person up in our house. The congregation allowed this man to exist under their noses and the police employed him and looked the other way at obvious signs of behavior.

He was a Cantor (religious leader, 2nd to the Rabbi) in Nashville and a police officer for the Nashville police department. I am not naive enough to believe I was the first, so there had to be a pattern of behavior prior to me that was ignored. Not just in Nashville, but Jacksonville, Fl., his hometown.

He decided to move to Memphis shortly after we met. Seems he felt a special bond with me and wanted to be closer. No kidding.

I was only 11 the first time and had no clue. I always wanted a big brother and that is how I treated the relationship. I was flattered by the attention at first. He let me drive his car and gave me money and let me get whatever I wanted to eat at the grocery store.

He had my parents blessing, they were happy I had someone that could give me such brotherly attention. My father was never in town, he traveled for a living, when he was in town he didn’t have much time for me.

Besides they had a new child now, my little brother, and he got most of their attention. Sure I had 2 sister’s, but they were in opposite directions, one older and the other younger.

So I was very happy to have someone give me so much “affection” and attention.

Anytime he wanted me to stay with him on the weekend, my parents were delighted. I mean this guy was now a high ranking police officer in Memphis and had entrenched himself in our synagogue as a Cantor and a youth adviser. I was in safe hands. If they only knew how safe right?

Imagine being tutored for your Bar Mitzvah by the very man that abused you. Not easy for me to enjoy that memory. I could give many more details about this experience and I will probably revisit parts of this in the future. Many of my behavior patterns from the time I was 11 to 28 were a result of this relationship.
It will never be something that goes away. Anyone that has ever been abused understands this. There are things about me that will never change because of this, but I did manage to undo some of the personal damage.

Unfortunately, relationships with my family have been damaged beyond repair and many things I went through cannot be undone.

My family has been in denial since I brought it to their attention. They are unable to deal with their own guilt. To make things worse on that front, I was even blamed for causing my father to have a heart attack shortly after informing everyone what had happened to me.

I just wanted them to know there was a reason for my past behavior, I didn’t place blame on them. By the time I had this revelation the person that abused me had escaped jurisdiction, leaving for Chicago in the wake of some other issues.

I tried to bring charges, they wouldn’t pursue, pretty sure it had to do with the fact he was one of their own high ranking officials. I could be mistaken. I gave them many facts and had other abused individuals willing to come forward.

See, I was not the only one. I started doing research based on certain situations and found out there were many others abused by him.

They did not want to turn their lives upside down. Some were now lawyers and bankers and had families of their own that they did not want to know this had happened to them too.

So I did what I could to alert the Chicago area to this man’s behavior. I did not have deep pockets or I would have done much more. Chicago was not right around the corner from me and I still had to make a living in Dallas.

There you have it. MY cat MJ will always have a special place in my heart and soul. She saved my life with the help of my higher power. They gave me an opportunity to see where I had once been blind and I am grateful.

there is something very mysterious about domestic cats. i have a 17 yr old cat who doesn't give anyone the time of day but she always seems to come around when i am upset. The Egyptians looked at cats like gods. When their house cat would die they would shave their eyebrows in mourning, not sure why though. But needless to say there is something very special about that species! I am very sorry about everything that has happened to you, but just remember justice may not be served on this planet but it will be served somewhere!

reply to post by DoubleEE


All I can say is... wow. You are incredibly strong for posting all of that. And I commend you (and your cat) for facing your 'demons' and breaking free. And I really hope you don't take their blame for your father's heart attack. It's bad enough what you went through, to try to force additional pain is not ok. You are an amazing and intelligent individual - and here is to your path in recognizing it!

Cats are amazing creatures

I had a bad run with drugs at one point in my life, when i was younger and one day it was so bad i flat out splashed onto the ground and remember thinking that this was the end. I couldn't breathe, felt like dying i guess. All of a sudden i open my eyes and on top of my chest was my dog, a basset hound. He was pounding on my chest, more like trying to shake me to wake up. That dog saved my life and i cannot forget it to this day. It is as if it just happened. This was many many years ago. Nothing happens without a reason, and just like people, animals do not come into our lives as a random happening.
That dog was the turning point in my life. We do many stupid things, but everything that happens to you has an underlying good reason to be like that. Sometimes we do not see it or chose to ignore it, but nevertheless, it happens for a reason. the first thing you should to is to forgive those that did you wrong and when you can do that you will be able to move on a different path on the timeline of your life. You can move in a completely different path, a better one. No more will you feel anger or sadness or pity. You will be whole again.

Cheers,
Andro