Rat and a cat

A rat and a cat once got married. They had three beautiful children together, or so the neighbors and relatives said anyway, and had a generally content life.

One day the rat got a call from office that changed everything. The base was being relocated and the officers would have to move. They would pay the relocation costs but the new town didn't have enough population to support a large number of jobs. The cat was worried; she was doing quite well at her own job and while the idea of moving itself wasn't a big deal, she wouldn't be able to find jobs in her field at the new place. She told her husband she would stay back with the kids for a year or two until they were old enough to be okay moving to a different town. By then she would be in a senior enough position at her company that they might let her work remotely too, she said. The rat agreed, after all many in the service didn't live with their families and it was only a few hours drive away. He would visit her one weekend, and the other weekend she would drive in with the kids. It was no big deal and besides the relocation wasn't permanent. Once he got high enough they'd send him to the HQ in DC and she would happily move there -- her family was from there and she couldn't find a better place careerwise.

And so it went. Every other week or so he would drive in late on Friday and drive back late Sunday night. She promised to come to him but never really did besides during the holidays when the kids wanted a change of scenery so it was a vacation of sorts for them to visit their father's base. It was tough managing the schedules of three children as well as a busy professional, he understood. They talked over video chat every day almost and it wasn't like they couldn't live separately at all, compromises were easy to make when the other party was a reasonable understanding person.

The winter months got sad and lonely and his heart would ache. He missed his family and children and his wife but he missed the human touch the most, someone to talk to and play with. It wasn't the horniness, he thought, it was the loneliness. The lonely nights and weeks turned to months and while things with home didn't change he started fraternizing with other women. Just talking and joking and teasing, it wasn't anything inappropriate -- they knew he was married and he knew it would be a very stupid decision to cross the line. And one day it just happened. It was the alcohol the cold the winter depression and that the woman was so goddamn flouncy and witty. They made out. He stopped and immediately left. He went home and cried to himself. It happened again the next weekend. And the following. And finally he crossed the line and hooked up with her. He was a cheater and felt incredibly bad about it.

One evening after making sure his children had slept, he told his wife everything. He had hinted at that for a few days so she had been expecting something of the nature. He told her that he didn't want an affair or he didn't want a divorce or anything he had just done something incredibly stupid because he was tired and sad and lonely. He asked for forgiveness, begged for mercy and told her he would do anything to make it up to her, even quit the job if she wanted to. He could make a career transition to tech like so many others had done, they were always looking for managers with military experience; it wouldn't be a big deal. She didn't speak for a long time. And then she told him, after a lot of consideration, that he would either have to make sure they were at the same place while not compromise her job opportunities, or just quit and they would move to a big city.

He did the latter -- got a hook-up with one of his older buddies in Boston and he was hired as a mid-level manager. She got a job in a large shoe company with a 30% raise from her position two weeks after he accepted the offer. Their move was swift.

Two years after moving to Boston, they had comfortably settled into a large house in the suburbs. Everything was as good as it could get. That's where our story begins.