Ok. I wrote half of a really long and meandering post, and then decided to go short and sweet. ..This isn't really short and sweet, but at least it focused on what happened today. My mom is partially employed. In her free time she does cat rescue. Mostly she does TNR (trap/neuter/return) but sometimes she brings cats home to socialize/keep at our house until they find a home. Three of our seven perma-cats are "foster failures" we acquired in this way. I told her if I was going to live at home (which I am this year) she had to stop bringing cats home, because I could not deal with noises/smells/hair/stress. She agreed. In practice, she just brought less (not zero) INTO the house and instead kept them in the basement and garage. She does not understand why I am still unhappy. Probably I am unhappy mostly because of unfair reasons involving feeling entitled to her time. But there are some valid reasons: 1) we have kept a bunch of the cats and I do not want more 2) her cats have got our cats sick 3) money, etc. But if I or my dad bring up the first reason she gets mad about the implication that she is "out of control"/a crazy cat lady/has no willpower. My mom is the kind of person who is willing to devote any amount of time, money, and personal hardship to saving an animal. This worries me, which I feel bad about - isn't that, like, a SAINTLY level of goodness? Probably I should not be advocating for her to leave sick kittens to die! And it's her time, anyway, and not my money, and we aren't going bankrupt or anything. The other thing that bothers me is that she is self-righteous (shouldn't she be allowed to? the doubtful bit of me says. she's neutered or rescued ~250 cats in the last year) - she judges people for being too badly-educated/stupid/uncooperative/occasionally, poor to do the right thing with animals, and she has zero patience for people who, ex., get upset at the prospect of learning to use a drop trap so they can trap a feral on their property. She someway proudly tells stories of Telling People Off for being - it's not like she says she's mad at them for the qualities I listed. But for asking stupid questions, or not wanting to help, or not doing the correct thing. This stresses me out! Things came to a head tonight. She had apparently told my dad that she got banned from a property, and he asked her about it. This confused me because she had told me yesterday about trying to trap sick kittens on a woman's property and then being prohibited from coming back because my mom's friend was (self-righteous) rude on the phone with the woman. No, she said, she'd been banned from that same property, AGAIN. ???, I more or less said. She went back today and there were NO TRESPASSING signs and the gate was wired shut. Guess what she did! She went on the property and set up her traps and waited. Her friend showed up. They tried to trap some kittens. The woman came over to their car. (My mom described her as "obviously mentally ill" and as having "a hoarder mentality" and "shaking with anger.") She tersely told them to take their things off her property and leave. My mom explained to her that the kittens were too small and sick to get off the property and that she could trap all the other cats elsewhere, but she needed to be there to trap the kittens. The woman left them on her property, with the traps, which my mom took as consent to keep sitting there (???) (At this point I had gone to stand in the kitchen and hyperventilate because I'm anxious and overreact to things, while my dad had said "You're gonna get arrested" a couple of times.) They waited around for the kittens for a few more hours. The woman came back. She took down my mom's plates and told her to get off her property. My mom said she thought she was okay with it since she'd explained it was only for the kittens? The woman said to get off her property and put back all the things (this is where the hoarder comment comes in - my mom said her yard was a mess and there was junk everywhere) that they had moved or knocked over. My mom (she relayed this part of the story to us triumphantly) told her that she wouldn't move a FUCKING thing, because she wouldn't let her get the kittens, and that she was going to sit right outside the property and trap there. (me, incredibly conflict-avoidant, in the kitchen: SILENTLY HORRIFIED) My dad said again: You're gonna get arrested. And my mom got angry at him and said he did /ask/, and he said he didn't mind that she was telling him, but that he was just saying, she was going to end up being arrested, and she said a police officer would see that there were animals in danger and not arrest her, and he said it wouldn't be up to the officer it would be up to the law, and she said you did /ask/. And he said yes, and he didn't mind her telling the story, he minded how she was acting on other people's property! (The above conversation is sort of jumbled and repetitive, sorry. I don't remember it clearly) At which point, I was coming out of the kitchen, and said "you said you were kicked off the property, not that you ignored this woman's no trespassing signs and unwired her gate and-"* * I was referencing her comment about him asking her for the story, by saying that he had no idea of what the story was when he asked for it. And she said she didn't know why we were all being so hostile! I said "because it's ILLEGAL!!" and went in my room. Now I am having a moral crisis. I guess I am, in theory, sometimes in favor of breaking the law. Certainly I am in favor of breaking unjust laws. And dying kittens seem like a pretty good cause - but it seems like there it's the situation that is injust, not the law of "don't go on other people's property if they don't want you there." The way she told the story also freaked me out - like she was Triumphing Over The Establishment. And... that's a narrative I sometimes buy into! Look at, like, the Mall of America protesters. I don't know. Bleh. This is probably the least coherent longpost I've ever written, sorry. I don't really have a particular question, I'm just sort of lost.
Ugh, this post is a mess. My intention was to sort it out in my head as I was writing it, but there are so many things involved that I didn't mention, and I'm not thinking very clearly anyway. I probably could have upped the overall clarity by writing the dialog like normal dialog, though. : |
For what it's worth, I was able to follow your post fine. I unfortunately don't have any advice or anything, but it does sound sucky and I'm sorry you're kind of stuck in the middle of it
You're right and she's wrong about the law of trespass. She will likely pick up a misdemeanor/petty misdemeanor charge shortly if she keeps this up.
@oph Thank you! I guess I was hoping the issue would become clearer to me as I was writing, which is often my goal in writing about stuff that happens to me. but instead I just stressed myself out more. And, as a consequence, the whole post is now just confusing and upsetting to me (#subjectivityproblems #i did not sign up to have my emotions influence my reality) @rigorist Well, hopefully she won't :P I don't think any of us actually thought it wasn't illegal - just that she thought it was illegal-but-righteous (and maybe illegal-but-righteous-enough that anybody who saw it would take her side). Meanwhile I have rule-follower terror instead of a moral compass :| (this is my assessment of myself, not something she said, and I am aware that generally one should follow laws. but I Cannot Break A Rule even if it's.. not a law, and clearly wrong)
What would your moral opinion be if it was a total stranger instead of your mom? Cos, like, if it was me in your situation, I think I'd be too overwhelmed by the sense of Jesus H Christ, mum, I know you want to do the right thing but please have some damn self-preservation to be at all objective.
i would be horrified if my mom did that, not because it was breaking the law, but because her sense of moral superiority is leading her to think that she gets to decide when she has to respect other people's rights. that other people's feelings don't matter, that they're not entitled to their own things and spaces and safety, if she has a really good reason for infringing upon or destroying them. it's completely understandable for you to be upset when faced with that kind of behavior from someone you're close to.
I told Blue this over Skype chat, but the thing that worries me the most is the use of "mental illness"/"hoarding mentality" as a dismissal. While I don't know how universal my motivations are, I have mild hoarding problems, and I know that if this lady did have hoarding problems and they worked at all like mine, that would be an even better reason to stay the hell away. Because in my case, hoarding is heavily tied into "this is mine, this is my space, these are my things"- I once had a crying meltdown as a kid over the fact that my mom did stuff in my room while I was at summer camp. Something like what her mom did would be an invasion and a boundary-violation to anyone, but if this person was a hoarder (and if my experience of it is at all typical), it could border on outright triggery. Her mom treating it as a way to discredit this lady when to me it sounds like even more of a reason to get the hell out of there for multiple people's safety is... worrying to me.
Yeah Blue, your mom's very much in the wrong here. Honestly if someone invaded my mom's garden or my building's front yard (which is fenced off) I would flip the fuck out because "strangers who can get into where I live and I can't stop them" is majorly triggery. Kittens or no kittens there's no justification for doing that, let alone for being an asshole to people over it. I don't think there's anything bad or immoral about the way you reacted.
