MIL’s negligence has inadvertently killed our cat.

This is going to be a long one. Before I (21F) get into the story behind the title of this post I will probably need to provide some context into the whole situation with my partner (22F) and her mum (40F).

MIL had my partner when she was a teenager and because she was off the rails and very young essentially neglected her until my partner was around 14. MIL also has had issues with alcohol addiction for a lot of her adult life. From my understanding it got to the point where CPS threatened to get involved, and if it wasn’t for other relatives and family friends my partner would have been put into foster care. She was basically raised by her grandmother, who was an amazing woman, though sadly she passed away earlier this year.

Obviously knowing this before I met MIL for the first time in 2020 made me slightly apprehensive of her. My partner is the best person in my life and naturally her well-being and happiness is my priority. MIL has recently remarried and now has a toddler and during 2020 was converting my partners old room into a room for her little sister. Thankfully she is taking a very different parenting approach to SIL (4F) and seems to be doing well with her.

When I first met MIL she was very welcoming, though without any warning before hand told my partner (when we arrived) that she needed to move her things out of the room immediately over the weekend we were visiting. I thought the lack of warning was very weird and the whole situation was just really awkward and it basically meant we were stuck in the flat for the majority of the visit.

Since then I’m much more familiar with the dynamic that MIL and my partner have. My partner has had to grow up pretty quickly due to the neglect from MIL and as a result she often is made to feel like her sister (or even mother sometimes). My partner is used as a one sided emotional crutch for MIL, she pays for family outings, helps out with child support for her younger sister, and often has to give advice to MIL on how to be a functioning adult. MIL also is very reactionary and at her big age will slam doors and stomp around shouting if she is criticised or questioned (even in a totally non confrontational way).

My partner has been MIL’s rock through recent months after her grandmother passed. She’s had to help them move house, made decisions about the inheritance, organised funeral arrangements and again has essentially been the “adult” in this situation. It’s been extremely traumatic for her and she is trying to grieve in her own way which is different from MIL. All of this makes the events in the last 48 hours very difficult to stomach for both is us, especially on top of the already existing grief.

MIL has acknowledged how she was a fairly shitty parent to my partner, however what infuriates me is her reluctance to make any effort to change. She’s still her daughter, even if she is an adult now, but continues to be neglected and disrespected by MIL’s negligence and self absorbed victim complex.

When my partner was around 16 she got a cat which has since lived with MIL while she’s been studying at uni. We had planned to take the cat to live with us after we graduate this year because with SIL we knew the cat wasn’t getting the attention she needed. The cat is an indoor cat and we had planned to keep her this way because it can be really dangerous to transition them outside when they’re adults and it’s all they’ve known.

On Sunday my partner gets a text from MIL saying “I feel bad that I have to tell you this but [cat] has been missing since Thursday.” We’re both immediately furious but are trying to hold it together so we can get the full picture before we start pointing fingers at who has condemned our pet to a probable and preventable death. MIL insisted they were training her to be an outdoor cat – which we should have been consulted on first if that was at all true (spoilers it wasn’t). She’s being very vague in her texts and is also bringing up stuff about grandmother (which is very traumatic and triggering for my partner) in an attempt to minimise the issue or distract us from the fact she has lost out f*cking cat. Partner gets a call from her stepfather (who is primary cat carer and generally a lovely guy) who fills us in on what happened on Thursday.

Apparently he went to bed early that night and left MIL and her friend drinking downstairs. When he woke up he knew something was off because the cat didn’t come and wake him up. He then went downstairs and found the door unlocked so pieces together what happened. She left the cat unsupervised outdoors and was too drunk to check she was inside. She then shut the door (so even if the cat came back she wouldn’t have been able to get back in), left the door unlocked and went to bed.

To give him credit step FIL has been searching for the cat around the neighbourhood, and is clearly very upset as well. Unsurprisingly it was my partner who had to make social media posts to get the word out. We don’t even live in the same county as them so the fact MIL has left it to us to organise a small scale search and rescue is genuinely mind blowing. She’s too cowardly and ashamed to even apologise or accept any responsibility for her actions and has made no effort to make any of this right.

We’re now not on speaking terms with her. I don’t even know if I can stand to see her in the foreseeable future. It breaks my heart to see this woman make my partners life so difficult and painful and she’s been so disrespected by her through this ordeal it makes me nauseous. Even though my partner hasn’t lived with her for years she still finds a way to neglect and abuse her and I am so done trying to be the bigger person. I want my partner to at least express how disappointed she is with MIL because she’s never going to change if she doesn’t know the damage she does to her life. We’re just so sad and angry.

I don’t know if it’s my place to express how we feel to her or how I can even move on from this to support my partner if they speak to each other again. I just want what’s best for my partner in all of this. Thanks if you made it to the end of this post – any advice is appreciated.

TLDR; negligent MIL lost our indoor cat, only told us about it 4 days after the incident, and has made no effort to search for her since.