Years ago, after leaving my long-term partner, I moved in with a friend, Sarah. We had known each other for about 10 years but had never been very close. However she offered me a room, which I saw as an out so I took it. Mostly we got along well, but she had a cat which I hated intently.

Sarah had a boyfriend who lived in another suburb and about three or four times a week she went and stayed at his place. Leaving me with the cat.

She rarely fed it, always forgetting to buy its food and worst of all hardly ever emptied its festering, stinking litter tray. I resented how she just expected me to look after this cat I despised. She never took much interest in it, even when she was home she rarely remembered to feed it and if she was out of food she simply locked it outside so she didn't have to listen to it cry.

The cat was a little strange as well, having all kinds of crazy attacks where it would bolt around the house for 30 minutes and then proceed to meow for about half an hour, trying to rub up against my legs incessantly, leaving its fur all over my clothes.

Goodness knows why, when I never showed it any attention, but it would also always try to sit on me if I was watching TV and often it would sneak into my room and hide under my bed and then refuse to come out. To put it mildly, the cat irritated the living daylights out of me.

After living there for six months, I had finally had enough, so when the cat had another one of its attacks I decided it was time to take action.

I packed the cat into a pet carrier and went for a drive. I drove for about an hour, finally coming to a stop in a small town. I pulled up in a park, made sure no one was around and opened the cage. The cat bolted out of the cage into the park. I quickly shut the door, got back in the car and drove off.

When I got home I made sure I put the pet carrier back in the same spot it had been before, and went about my day.

When Sarah came home that night, she didn't seem to notice the cat missing. I didn't say a word. It wasn't until about three days later she asked me "have you seen the cat?"

I said I had seen it the day before but not since. She frantically rang animal shelters and vets, but the animal was not micro-chipped or registered, so she of course had no luck.

It took her a week to come to grips with the fact that the cat had simply vanished. I did feel a little bad because she had paid a lot of money for it but mostly I was just relieved that I no longer had to put up with its noise, fur and smells or the burden of taking care of it when she wasn't there. I actually hope it found a new home, with someone who wanted it and fed it daily.

To this day she still thinks that it was stolen, or killed and I've never said a word to make her think otherwise. Thankfully she hasn't been tempted to replace it, yet.

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