R.I.P. Pawnsy-Boy. My girls never got a chance to see their cat again. They're lucky that it was only their cat and not a family member.

RIP Pawnsy-Boy. Pawnsy, who started off as Hans but later morphed into Pawnsy-Boy, had to be put down today because he had kidney failure. Pawnsy was my daughters’ cat that my ex brought home a few months before she told me that she wanted a divorce. Of course I was “stuck” with Pawnsy because she couldn’t take the cat. Pawnsy was a very loyal cat that spent a majority of his life hanging out and often sleeping on people. Unfortunately, Pawnsy did not live long enough to see his little girls again.

I’m an animal person and I loved the cat. Mom took the cat to the vet and she came back alone. I pretty much expected that Pawnsy was at the end of his rope but we didn’t have the conversation of what we would do with Pawnsy. Mom told the vet to have him cremated but I didn’t feel it did the old guy justice. I guess I felt bad because I always buried my dogs behind the garage on the farm so they could see the sun set every night. I guess it’s kind of goofy but it seemed like a peaceful resting place for my loyal friends. In fact, it was such a nice view of the sunset, my 87 year old grandma once joked that if she didn’t have a plot next to grandpa, she wouldn’t mind being buried next to my dog Cozmo. I just felt that my boy Pawnsy deserved the same effort and respect as the dogs.

Even though the girls’ cat died today, it has been another lucky day for them. They will never see their Pawnsy-Boy again but they are lucky that it was just their cat that died today. What if their Grandma Sue or Uncle Matt died today? What if something happened to their older cousins Katie and Holly? How would the girls be affected if I happened to die of cancer or if I was killed in an automobile accident before they got to see me again? “We have some good news and some bad news, girls. The good news is that you get to see Daddy’s family again. The bad news is, Daddy was killed by a drunk driver 5 months ago.”

These are the risks that vindictive people take when they play with my daughters’ lives. Their anger and hatred for me blinds them from being able to see what is in my children’s best interests. They don’t care if my mother dies before the girls have the opportunity to see their grandmother again. They don’t care if I die. They don’t care if the girls ever get to see their dad or his family. If they did, they wouldn’t keep trying to have me arrested and trying to hold me in contempt of court, while searching for bogus reasons as to why the girls should not see their father.

I put a lot of effort into Pawnsy-Boy because I knew how important he was to the girls. Near the end of the divorce, I spent a majority of my time at Mom’s house in Norwood because I was working on my case and farm life didn’t have the conveniences of Office Depot and high speed internet. I probably drove a couple thousand miles just to change Pawnsy’s litter box and to feed him during that time. That’s the same dad that they claimed to be dangerous to his own children. I wanted to keep things as normal as possible for the girls so they didn’t have any abrupt changes in their lives. That philosophy went out the window when Judge Humphrey took me out of my daughters’ lives.

Now I have to bury my buddy Pawnsy-Boy, because he was my loyal friend. I could have let the vet throw the ashes into the dumpster but it wouldn’t have been the honorable thing to do. Hopefully when I get to see my daughters I will only have to explain the death of Pawnsy-Boy. They will be upset; but not nearly as upset if I have to tell them that a family member died while people were trying to keep them away from Daddy. The sad thing is that they will understand all of this at some point in their lives. They will know that people worked hard to cheat them out of over a year with their dad and his family. That’s not a fair thing to put on children. The one thing that my girls can always take comfort in knowing is that their dad will always fight to be their dad. I love you girls and Daddy will keep fighting for you.

-Dan Brewington

www.danhelpskids.com