I wonder what kind of pets you have and what they possibly taught you.

The pets I grew up with weren’t exactly the typical ones you’d bump into while walking down a street in Georgetown. I haven’t yet seen someone crossing the street with a cow or a dozen chickens. Yet. Because in the USA, you see all sorts of things, so who knows? That might just happen one day soon.

Anyway, cows and chickens were our pets, guarded by a gang of cats. This gang usually just collected their payment in food for the “services” they provided. That service mostly involved lounging around, blocking doorways, and looking generally roughed up, all while expecting you not to step on a tail. I often failed at that, so many of them held a grudge against me, but thankfully not enough to organize a revenge attack while I was asleep.

Another, more serious fear I had growing up was the sound of my dad’s car engine early in the morning. My childhood mornings were pretty repetitive. It always started with my mom struggling to get me out of bed—a continuation of the even more difficult struggle she had to go through to get me to sleep the night before—and my dad rushing through his coffee so he could drop us off at school before heading to his own school where he taught math. While all this morning chaos was unfolding, my dad would have already started the car engine, which needed a good 15 minutes to warm up before we could actually head out.

The fear of the car engine wasn’t because I didn’t like going to school—that was a given, so I didn’t need an engine to remind me where I was headed. And it wasn’t because the engine was loud. It was because it soon became a symbol of sadness and loss.

Thinking about it now, that experience feels a bit like the common fear of flying people talk about today. Many people worry most about the takeoff, the initial part of the flight, and my experience with the car was very similar. Every morning, on my way to the car, I’d worry if the engine would suddenly stop. Because if it did, that day would turn into a dark one, where we would wait anxiously by my dad’s side to see which cat was gone.

My cat was Rambo, not because I liked him the most, but because my sister had already claimed Poussy as her own, so I was left with Rambo. He didn’t really show much affection for me. Poussy, on the other hand, was kind of betraying my sister. She would sneak into the house by climbing to the second floor and slipping in through a room window. Conveniently, my bed was right by that window, so she’d sneak in, curl up, and then leave early in the morning before I even woke up.

Poussy was my grandma’s favorite cat too—she had raised her for more than 10 years, so there was a very special kind of bond between them, one that nothing seemed able to break. Poussy would wait for my grandma while she was milking the cows, always by her side when she was cooking, when she was cleaning, and even when she was smoking. I still believe Poussy was secretly a smoker.

My grandma, who was in her late 60s back then, was a very generous woman. Besides taking care of the cow (and sometimes more than one) and a dozen chickens—I grew up eating their eggs and drinking their raw milk in the morning, with a spoonful of sugar, of course—she also took care of the cats. She would feed them rice and leftover chicken skins and legs that she usually got from the market for free. Sometimes, when there wasn’t any rice, she would feed them yogurt. But yogurt was the last resort and only used when it was absolutely necessary, as that food was meant for us kids, and there were a lot of us.

As for Rambo, he had a mind of his own, often doing things that, to put it mildly, weren’t always very smart. So, I always worried about him because he had a habit of finding comfort during the wintertime by sleeping under the hood, right near the car engine—a very cozy yet deadly spot. I guess that’s the kind of dangerous comfort many people are drawn to in different ways, often without realizing the risks, much like Rambo. But Poussy was a smart cat. For some reason, she never snuck into the engine area, stayed away from the car, and was very careful not to jaywalk when cars were passing.

While Rambo tinkered with death a lot, managing to survive his engine adventures for years, things didn’t really turn out well for Poussy. For her, the true danger wasn’t the teeth of a rattling old engine, but a decision made by the ones she trusted most.

Poussy, that year, gave birth to more than five kittens. The spot she chose to give birth, however, was the storage area inside one of our old couches. These couches had a box-like storage space built into them, which a cat could easily sneak into through an opening, usually found in the back. Poussy felt safe there among her people, trusting my grandma and grandpa to take care of her. After all, she had spent over 10 years in that house looking for mice and snakes and bringing her prey to the front door almost daily. She thought she had done her job well.

My grandpa didn’t really feel the same way about Poussy and wasn’t fond of cats in general. He especially didn’t appreciate that he now had kittens inside his couch. So, one day, my grandpa waited for Poussy to go out and leave the kittens alone. He grabbed the opportunity, scooped up the kittens, and threw them somewhere in the forest, far from Poussy.

Poussy came back that day and moaned in sorrow all day long. My grandma was very upset with Grandpa and demanded he bring the kittens back. He went out and returned empty-handed, claiming he couldn’t find them where he’d left them and that a wild animal must have devoured them.

But Poussy stopped her moaning and went out searching for her kittens. And sure enough, she found them, alive and well. This time, however, she didn’t bring them back into the house. Instead, she hid them somewhere else, far away from Grandpa; he was surely no friend.

Of course, my grandma knew where the kittens were but wouldn’t tell my grandpa. And I bet that was the right thing to do.

Rambo would grow old and die of old age. But Poussy? Soon after what happened with her kittens, she left and never came back. I still wonder if something else happened to her, or if that bond, that trust, was so broken that her only choice was to head somewhere far away from that house.

Rambo didn’t give a damn and lived the life he wanted. Poussy, though, did everything the “right” way and got what she didn’t deserve. What about all the good she did, like clearing snakes from the house perimeter, and all the rats and mice she caught?

Sometimes, no matter how good you are to those around you, you might be one decision away from being left alone—and not only that but betrayed in the literal sense of the word. So, don’t waste your time looking for the danger that’s out there, the danger you can plainly see. Instead, worry about the danger you can’t see.