My mom gave away my childhood cat to strangers.

I don't think I will ever really recover from this. It happened around 8 months ago, my childhood cat named Kitty I was given when I was 11, a little calico barn cat with the most gorgeous ivy-green eyes, was given away to a man living in some shoddy motel with 2 other roommates right next to a highway. My mother said my cat would be cared for and she "trusted" whoever it was, I didn't know them personally at all.

I moved away from my narcissistic parent around 3 years ago to a different province, and the last request I had for her was to take care of my Kitty, because she's the most precious thing to me and even offered to gove her money to afford food/litter/treats etc.

My mother has had a history of giving away my pets all throughout my childhood and this was the one I had the longest. At the age of 17 she also let my domestic pet rabbits loose at my relatives farm (domesticated rabbits cannot forage or survive in the wild, so she literally just killed them by letting them "roam free").

Every time I ask her to go and physically check up on my cat, she dodges the question and straight up ignores my pleas for information on her, since I don't even know if she's alive and I'd rather know the truth.

I asked her if she even got the dude's contact information or phone number and she said no. So she can't even call to make sure my pet's okay.

I will wake up at night after dreaming about her and burst into tears. My partner and I have 2 dogs, one of which he has had for 12 years and another we just got a year ago, but I find myself unable to bond to the younger dog because my heart still belongs to my cat I had for 10 years.

I just don't know what to do at this point. I've never felt this devastated, it's like I lost a part of myself. Like I lost an actual child. It reminds me of how bad it hurt when I lost my grandparents, like a deep ache stabbing inside my chest and a sinking weight on top of it.

It haunts me that she was basically abandoned and I don't even know if she's alright, and I don't know if I ever will know that or if my mother will just keep evading responsibility forever and hope I'll forget about it.

I also feel like a bad person because I don't know if I'll ever forgive my mom for this, and I don't know if I'll ever even want to see her in person again because of how traumatizing this was considering I already have extensive mental health issues, have been institutionalized 4+ times and honestly can't deal with or process death/loss well at all.

I feel like I'm a bad person for being so careless about my baby and not just trying my best to take her with me and not leaving her with my mother. I just wanna say sorry to her. I wanna see her and tell her I love her again and let her rest on my lap and purr as she falls asleep. I'm so so broken from this.

Has anyone else's parents used pets as a way to manipulate you?