When a cat goes missing, you put up posters and call shelters
And then you wait.
The waiting is the worst. The not knowing.
Every cat cry, every sound makes you think they’re back.
They’re not.
I walked around until my knee felt full of broken glass.
And walked around some more.
You look everywhere you’ve found them before, but they’re never there.
They’re everywhere but where you look.
So you keep looking.
I saw something. On the sidewalk.
No. It’s just a shirt someone had dropped on their way back from the laundry room.
And walked around some more.
Tag: cats
Myst needs a kitten
Myst has never been alone until now.
She was born into a big litter at a friend’s trailer park.
We were going to take her and her brother, but old Nardo already had his paws full with Bruwyn. Another new kitten was pushing it, so two probably would have killed him.
When Nardo died, she still had Bruwyn, and they cleaned each others ears every day. And they went out hunting and playing in the grass.
Now that Bruwyn is gone, Myst is all alone. She really needs a kitten-friend.
Because I’m sick of cleaning her ears. They taste disgusting.
Laundry Helper
Whenever my wife does laundry, she stacks the folded clean clothes on the bed.
And then, Nardo the orange cat would jump on the bed and roll around on the clean clothes.
Orange cat hair all over everything.
He taught Bruwyn to roll around on the clean laundry, and both of them would shed all over the clothes.
When Nardo was gone, Bruwyn had the laundry duty all to himself.
Now that Bruwyn’s gone, there’s no more laundry assistants.
Myst prefers to roll around in the dirt outside.
Maybe if I tossed all the clean clothes into the dirt…
Nah.
The Loss Of Hope
Bruwyn didn’t come home Monday night.
We made posters, and we sent his photo to all the shelters and the city pound.
LOST CAT
DOMESTIC SHORTHAIR
BLACK MALE
CHECKERED COLLAR
ANSWERS TO “BOO”
And my phone number.
A neighbor just called me.
He’d finally seen the poster, and he recognized the collar.
He’d seen him by the side of the road.
Dead.
He’d gone back there to get him, but the city had picked up his body.
Closure, they call it.
But even though I know that Bruwyn is dead, I still look in the bushes and around every corner.
Sponges
My cats are refusing to admit which one shredded kitchen sponges.
Damn cats. I bet they did it together.
I soak a sponge in hot sauce to train them not to shred the sponges, but they washed out the hot sauce and shredded them.
Locking the kitchen cabinet didn’t work either. Sneaky cats!
I stopped buying sponges, but my cats figured out how to order things online, and they ordered sponges.
Now, I get all my food via take-out, and I hired a maid to clean.
No more dishes. No more sponges.
But now the cats want to shred me!
Trust
Some days, when I get home and lay back on the sofa, it takes a while for Bruwyn the cat to join me and drape himself over my leg for a nap.
Other times, I’m barely settled in before I find my leg pinned by a furry purring sack.
Either way, I’m happy to let the cat nap on me.
Until I run out of iced tea. Or need to go to the bathroom.
I feel guilty for making him move, but over time, he comes back to flop over my leg sooner and sooner.
That trust feels even better.
Crawdads
THIS IS THE 4,000TH EPISODE OF THIS PODCAST
I love crawdads.
Back in college, Ellen taught me how to eat crawdads, and I’ve been eating buckets of them ever since.
Nardo the cat loved the crawdad smell on my fingers, so I’d set aside a few tails to bring home to him.
He’d meow and beg and snap at the bits of crawdad I offered him.
“No more,” I’d say, and he’d lick my fingers for awhile.
This is my first crawdad season without him. And our two black cats don’t like crawdads.
I ate the entire bucket myself.
Except one, left atop the pile of empty shells.
Cold Cat
Usually, the cats like to go outside and hunt. They come back in to get food, water, and use the litterbox.
But Bruwyn really doesn’t like it when the Winter chill comes.
Instead of going outside with Myst to hunt lizards, he stays inside and sleeps on the bed or curls up on the top of the chair.
Okay, so he sometimes goes outside in the cold, but he comes back inside quickly, and he growls angrily as he runs around the hall.
I grumble as I walk home from work in the cold, and know exactly how he feels.
Companion
Myst has lost a lot in her little life.
She lost her cat family when we took her away from them.
She lost Nardo when he died.
And Bruwyn when he never came home again.
Our hope was to get her a kitten that she’d bond with and make a companion.
That way, she’d have a cat to clean her ears, chase around to play with, and not be alone while my wife and I are at work.
Tinnie the kitten is supposed to be that companion.
Oh, she loves us. But she and Myst hiss at each other.
Shit.
Pointers
In addition to a digital photo frame, I’ve mounted a laser pointer to the brace on my arm.
I can turn it on and wiggle it, to make the cats go crazy and chase it.
It runs on a pair of AA batteries so it lasts a long time. And the switch is a toggle, so I don’t need to hold down the button to keep the laser on.
I had a good time with it, until I fell asleep with my arm pointing out the window, flashing into the cockpits of airplanes landing at the airport two blocks away.