Our Zora used to lick the butter. If we left it uncovered we’d come down in the morning to find tiny grooves in butter from her cat tongue.

When Gary or I confront something neither of us is willing to admit we did, we say, “The cat did it.” It is a none-too-subtle admission of fault. Sometimes we don’t remember breaking a glass (nearly always Gary) or losing track of something (mostly me), or which of us cut a sandwich on the baking cabinet (me again), or we’d like to blame our children or housebreakers. It was me or it was Gary who did whatever it was because we are the only two living in our house. But even when we are certain who “done it”, we might say: The cat did it. Mind you, we were saying this when we had one or the other cat, and we’ve not stopped saying it merely because our last cat left the planet some years ago. We could have blamed our dog Yeti, but she would have been offended. The cats did not care.

That transfer of responsibility to a no-longer-living cat works for us. It’s meant as a joke. We blame the cat when it doesn’t matter too much whether we are accurate. Whatever. Taking responsibility is more difficult when we’re talking about something that matters. Many fully grown adults struggle with the concept of responsibility. Denial probably seems safer or comes more easily.

Taking responsibility or otherwise accepting blame can be harder than changing my mind, though I know plenty of people unable to do either. There are the things I do that I wish I hadn’t, the things I should have done but didn’t, the things I didn’t realize at the time, the things that really are not my fault at all, and the things that really, really are. Mea culpa.

I get sweaty just thinking about my mistakes. I would like someone else to take responsibility off my shoulders. Don’t we all hope for that lightness sometimes?

Even though I was writing fiction, I read The Year of Magical Thinking while I was completing my MFA. It was the first audiobook I had ever listened to—and the last, because I found it annoying to have to keep rewinding to bits I wanted to hear again (and because Claire Davis told me not to listen, but read). I liked it a lot better than her famous essay collection, which is undoubtably well-written, but reflects an entitled white elitism and indifference to most of us I found deplorable. I gave Slouching Toward Bethlehem three stars on Goodreads, five for the writing itself, one star for what she wrote and failed to note—as if her entire audience was exclusive, conservative, rich, and white. Which it was.

Years later she wrote powerfully about how the death of her husband affected her over the first year, how grief impacts us all. It is a deeply moving memorial, and I listened to all of it at least twice. I gave it five stars on Goodreads. However, as I listened to her description of the death of her husband, I could not help noting that while John Gregory Dunne had a well-known heart condition, Didion had not learned to administer CPR. When he collapsed, she phoned for help and stood in their dining room, waiting for EMTs. When I learned CPR, required as a teacher, we were told not to worry about harming the person with chest compressions: “They are already dead,” which is why you are doing CPR. Didion did nothing while waiting for emergency help. The EMTs were not there quickly enough to bring him back, of course—this was New York City, and response time in 2003 would inevitably fail to arrive in time to save him.

No cat in her stories that I recall. If she felt any guilt for her failure to do anything beyond calling for help, I missed it. CPR doesn’t always help, of course.

In 2020, any-mention sudden cardiac arrest mortality in the US was 436,852. CPR, especially if administered immediately after cardiac arrest, can double or triple a person’s chance of survival.—Red Cross

We want someone to blame for things no one can control and even for the things we can. Didion wanted, at least, to understand and detail her husband’s death and how it affected her. She might blame the slow response of medics, but that was inevitable. I might blame her, but that’s not fair either. We blame the messy house on the rest of the family. We blame the President for the economy. We blame our busy lives for what we leave neglected and undone. We look for some factor outside our control to hold responsible when in our hearts we blame ourselves. That might be unfair as well. I know this; I do it too. We try to blame failures on everything and everyone other than our own selves. Who could Didion blame? Who can blame her? I didn’t, though I shook my head. I gave her book five stars. I can blame his smoking for my dad’s death from cancer. I can blame the smoking on “Smoke ’em if you’ve got ’em.” I could blame that Army line on the efforts of the tobacco industry to suppress the deadliness of their product, not to mention their efforts to increase addiction. I could blame that on their attention on their profit margin, which can be blamed on the general capitalist tendency of prioritizing money over people. Lots of blame to go round. And what does it gain me to follow that trail?

It’s easy to assign blame; there’s more than enough to go around. By the time the connection between cigarettes and cancer was announced by the Surgeon General of the United States, my dad was addicted. So was my beloved math teacher, who tried to quit and failed. Lots of things we might have a choice about at the beginning become inevitable later on. The house is so messy the kids are ashamed to have friends over, my fondness for salty snacks raises my blood pressure, my skill at baking pushed my weight up, and misusing tools damages them. Habits die hard. The only way I didn’t become addicted to cigarettes is because I never smoked one.

Most of the misfortune in my life is not the result of malice from others or my failure or even “bad luck.” I don’t believe in fate, but even fate would make a more satisfying scapegoat than random chance. I have bad habits, and sometimes bad things happen that may or may not be the result of something I did, and people sometimes let me down. I wish I could confidently point my finger at someone who is responsible, as some people seem always able to do. I wish I had someone to blame.

Blame the cat.