I am immersed in a dilemma that I can't figure out ~ the back story being that when I decided to move out of Michigan and to New Mexico three years ago, I had a cat that I didn't want to take with me at the time because things were happening so quickly and I couldn't arrange bringing her due to the tiny place I was going to be living in. The reason I had this cat in the first place was because many years ago my daughter had an AA friend who was being evicted because he had two cats he wasn't supposed to have. She said she would take one, and called me one Sunday night many years ago begging me to take the other one (temporarily, ha!) while he figured things out. He never did figure things out and after a time I reconciled myself to having a pet again, Mouse the Cat. I grew to love her once she finally warmed up to me.
When I used to go on my yearly road trips out west I would take the cat to my ex-MIL's house and she would cat-sit for three weeks, and when she went to Mexico over the Christmas holidays every year she would bring her cat over to my house for a few weeks. Both cats seemed to get along with each other during these times and we did this for many years. When I was trying to figure out if I was going to move to NM, Grandma B. readily said she would take Mouse, which lifted a huge weight off my shoulders. This worked out for over two years as far as I knew. Whenever I called Grandma B. she said both cats were fine and that she enjoyed having Mouse very much.
Then last summer as you all know, all hell broke loose when I had to rush back to Michigan because my daughter had died of an overdose. Amidst all that I found out that Grandma B. was in the process of getting a dementia diagnoses. When we all went over to her house (it became grief central), the smell of cat pee was overwhelming. Being 87 years old, she hadn't noticed that anything was amiss because she was losing her sense of smell. No one knew which cat was doing the peeing out of the litter box and in between all the crying and grieving, my ex-BIL wanted me to take the cat back. I am stilled pissed off to this day at him; unbelievable at the time I had just lost my daughter and was trying to make arrangements and living 1500 miles away when I didn't have a place for the cat at the time. I tried my best between bouts of agonizing grief to figure out what to do with this cat I didn't feel was mine anymore. I had a friend who was really into cats come and do a consult about how to rearrange the house so they'd be apart, she got more litter boxes, etc. I tried calling different shelters and foster cat places all the while dealing with all the stuff one does after a death, the emptying of her apartment, and then having to get back to NM and work. So I left Michigan after two weeks and left them to deal with the cat. I gave them permission to take the cat to a shelter (and I felt horrible about that but I had no other alternative because I couldn't have a pet in the tiny space I was living in). But Grandma B. didn't want the cat taken to a shelter so I guess they all tried a variety of solutions - my ex-husband had her for a bit but she didn't get along with his other pets. It turns out it was the other cat who was doing the peeing anyway. She then ended up this past year staying at my ex-SIL's empty house in Hamtramck catching mice for her keep. Someone would go over there every few days to feed and water her. I wasn't really kept apprised of what was going on with her; I have no communication at all with my ex anymore, nor my ex-SIL.
Anyway, now that the ex-SIL heard that I just bought a house here in New Mexico she wants me to take the cat back because she is finally selling the house where the cat has been. I was just in back in Michigan a few weeks ago but didn't know if the house deal was going to go through and had no idea at that time what had happened to the cat (Grandma B. was sort of being vague about it) All of the sudden ex-SIL contacted me on Instant Messenger about what to do with the cat that I am not quite sure is my responsibility anymore. I have again given them permission to take her to a (hopefully) no-kill shelter. I'm not sure how adoptable this cat is - she is a feisty one, but very sweet in her own right, but she fights like hell about being picked up and put in a cat carrier. I can't imagine driving with her 1500 miles, or even flying with her. The crux of it is that I do not have the time or the money to fly back to Michigan to get said cat any time soon. Ex-SIL keeps coming up with these creative ways for me to have "my" cat back and it is starting to feel weird to me - I don't know what to do and have explained to her several times that I cannot say definitively when I will be back in Michigan (certainly not until next spring at the soonest). I have told them three times to take the cat to a shelter but they don't want to do it apparently. And I feel so bad for this cat being shuffled around endlessly - if I could teleport her out here I would in a heart beat.
So, that is my long, convoluted story: what I want to know is, do you guys think I am still the owner of the cat now that Grandma B. can't take care of her? What is my responsibility here after so much time has passed? I tried to be as concise as I could spelling out the story of poor Mouse the Cat. Of course there is all this historical background of family dysfunction playing out here too; even though I have been divorced from my daughter's father since 1992, I remained quite close to my MIL all these years. They keep coming up with sort-of solutions, like ex-SIL will keep that cat if I can at some point come get her in the future but I cannot promise that. I have told her this in all these messages, thanking her profusely for taking care of kitty this past year, but always with an out for them - if it is too much, just take the cat to a shelter! I know it may not the ideal solution because of her adoptability, but to subject the cat to a plane ride with a layover that would last all day long seems cruel, let alone driving her 1500 miles (I would never have enough time off to even do that in the future anyway - it's a 3.5 day drive each way).
What would you do?