Dark(ish) Secrets

Am I a bad wife? I'm occasionally haunted by this thought. Not because I'm demanding, conflict averse and contradict everything my husband says. This is par for the course with all married couples (I think). No, its because I feel worse about leaving our cat than my husband. Joe Black (JB) is not thrilled at my leaving to set up a new life abroad, and it's going to be a huge wrench for him, but he can at least understand why I have to do it. Pancho on the other hand...

How can you explain to a cat that you're leaving him? 'Ah', I hear you say, 'as long as he's fed he doesn't care.' This is partly true, what cats hate most is to have their routine disrupted, and that includes regular feedings. But the thing is, Pancho is one of the few cats who does care about people. No, really, he does. I have the evidence of a year's absence to back me up. Apparantly he wandered about, miaowing peevishly. And he was delighted when I came back. Who else knows to make the bed just so for him every morning? Who else does he trust to hold his paw when he's snooozing? Who else knows when he's feeling frazzled by the presence of kittens in the garden and needs to be picked up a reassured? Who else suddenly pushes the bedroom door open, putting and end to any potential kitten-producing activities of which he strrrongly disapproves. Who else-actually, it's probably a good thing I'm going.