kethrai's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Lost and Found There's nothing quite like having a lost cat to make you listen for ghost feet. A little over three weeks ago, my younger cat went missing. We'd had him since he was a baby--he was the Darling Husband's baby more than mine, but you don't live six years in a house with a cat without becoming a de facto cat parent of some stripe, and while Fitz is not the small furry reflection of my heart that Miro is, he's definitely my kid. So it's a fine bright sunny Saturday morning, and I'm working a show in Connecticut, fielding nasty phone calls on my cell phone while dealing with my booth myself, trying across a hundred and twenty or so miles to get the Darling Husband organized enough to leave the house and join me in Connecticut. At about 11:30 in the morning or so, after the latest "I can't find my ____ and you suck for not knowing psychically where it might be" phone call that made me cry, I turned off my phone for a couple of hours to catch my breath. When I turned it back on mid afternoon, there were messages waiting. "Can't find the cat, not going to leave until he turns up."..... an hour later "Any ideas where we can search?"....a half hour after that "We're going to wait until dinner, and then start making missing posters." With each message, my stomach grew more leaden. I've been through this before. When I was growing up, we lived right downtown in a small town, four doors down from the local highschool. And we had cats. Indoor-outdoor cats. Dear, sweet friendly cats, who would go up and say hello to anybody at all, and over the course of ten years or so, several of them walked out the door and just....didn't come back. I remember being six, and going with my mother door to door...."Have you seen our cat?" Dear Non-Scheduled Reader, please pardon our ignorance in Cat-Raising. Our whole experience said that Cats Go Outside, and certainly the little guys and girls we adopted from the shelter were NOT indoor cats. And to be fair, the one who lived the longest, my Lady Amanda, lived until the ripe old age of nineteen (and that's only if they were truthful about her age at the shelter--she could have been as old as 22) and hunted right up until the last year of her life. So please do not email me or call me or whatever telling me about the Evils of Letting Cats Out, trust me, I already know. My two do not go out--ever--nor does my mother's.
And that damnded echo. "Have you seen my cat?" We had three cats die on the road when I was in high school and college and then moved out, three of old-age illnesses. Tommie died spasming on my fourteen-year-old lap on the way to the vet, lying in a laundry basket, her neck broken by the tire of the woman who came crying to our door to tell us that she was so terribly sorry. L. died on the road while I was at school, and the little gray kitty with the enormous feet died of a lung cancer long after I moved out. Her tabby friend died of diabetes and old age a year and a half later. The dates get hazy, except for my Lady Amanda, who died when I was 25. But those deaths were almost reassuring--I knew they were gone, there were holes to dig and small cairns to build, and the knowledge that they were well-spoiled and loved right up until they passed on, rather than walking out that door and...never coming back. We sat up at night, listening for the sound of the trap. We caught things; two neighborhood cats, one a slight ringer for our missing boy-- two mutant possums.... we had bait stolen out of the trap and the weeks dragged on and no Fitz. We got phone calls. One way the heck away, and it was a lovely little kitty who was totally unlike Fitz, but so sweet that I felt godawful at his not being ours until I realized the lady who had called us was busily making fostering and adoption plans for him. One of the nicer parts of the horror of losing Fitz was the realization that there were other crazy cat people out there who would go to as much trouble as we would for a kitty who obviously belonged to SOMEONE.... And then we got a call one Monday night. We got a call from a lady across town, saying she might have our kitty. We went flying across town, and spent about an hour catching the little bugger--braving barbed wire, a pissed cow, bushes, barns, and other fun-- stuffed him in the cat carrier, and ran him down to the ER vet, figuring even if he WASN'T ours, it was the right thing to do. Personable, friendly little guy....and not Fitz. At six Tuesday morning, I got up, went to the bathroom, checked on the little guy, (he was hiding in the alcove, and meowed at me) and went into the kitchen, where the Darling Husband was standing, sheet white and shaking. "Karma called," he said. "There's something in the trap. Can you look? I can't stand it if it's not him." And there, in the trap, was Fitz! Howling fit to raise the dead, and licked my fingers when I stuck them in the wire. We roused our Little Housemate and let her check, and he licked her and rowled at her, and that was it. It was Fitz in the trap. So we figured on packing up the three of them--Miro, Fitz, and the little beggar--and hauling them off to our regular vet. But somehow in the alarums and excursions, the visitor got out of the can and hid somewhere in the house. After hunting and calling, we packed up Miro and Fitz, hauled THEM off to the vet for a checkup and booster shots (by this time, none of the feline parties involved were AT ALL AMUSED) and then shut the two of them up in the bathroom, on the theory that maybe Little Beggar would come out if the other two weren't trying to hunt him down and kill him. Miro, who had rather enjoyed being King of the House for the last two weeks and some, had some rather pungent things to say about this arrangement, but we figured they'd work out their own damnation in their own way in the john together for the day. And so we have adopted the little visitor, who because of the cloudlike markings on his sides is now Cirrus. All three of them are circling each other cautiously, but show signs of settling down nicely, in that nobody has yet drawn blood or otherwise beat the tar out of each other. And slowly, the echoes are receding for me. All the ghost cat feet and the cat-sized holes in the house are stilling and filling, slowly, covered over with living fur and dinner-dish rushes, and the fading cry of "Have you seen my cat?" is not the first thing I think when I open my eyes nor the last thing I'm quite sure I heard before I drop off to sleep. Of all the cats that had simply walked out the door....one has come back. Just one. 4:45 p.m. - 2004-11-09 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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