Tucker

Two weeks ago, one of the crazy cat ladies with whom I volunteer had one of her cats go missing.

The cat, Tucker, was always an indoor-outdoor cat, but on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, he went outside and didn't come back in.

She asked for advice on finding him and I offered some, having been through a few heart-pounding missing-cat episodes of my own.  Search the area, calling and shaking a bag of cat food.  Look down under shrubs and up into trees.  Immediately plaster the area with posters, because SOMEONE has seen him.   Have your neighbors check their sheds and garages.  Bribe the neighborhood kids with a cash reward for any sightings.  Talk to the mailman.  Check the shoulders of local roads, and call the highway department (don't make me go into detail on that one). Call the shelters.  Put it on Craigslist.  The typical stuff.

I told her about The Runt, who was once up a tree for three days.  About another volunteer whose cat came home after eight days.  About yet another volunteer whose cat wandered home after three MONTHS.

And we all waited for news.  As the weather got colder and the days got shorter and that one night we got an absolutely soaking rain, we waited for news of Tucker.  Hoping for the best, but wondering in the back of our minds if the worst hadn't already happened.

Yesterday on Facebook, after fifteen days, there was news.

"Tucker Kitty CAME HOME!"

Goddamit, I LOVE a happy ending.

Random

My mom (87; Alzheimer's) is convinced that there is a family living in my sister's poolhouse. (Trust me; there isn't.) She was chatting away on Sunday about how they just had a new baby boy. It's kind of spooky.



I cleaned and refilled the hummingbird feeder for the last time on Saturday. I haven't seen any hummingbirds since the end of September, but I'll leave it up for another week just in case. Cleaning that thing out once or twice a week is a pain in the ass, but taking it down in the fall means that winter's coming. I'd keep cleaning it out year-round if it would just stave off winter.


I've been saying/thinking "knock-knock, motherf*cker" an awful lot lately. I think I've been reading too much of The Bloggess.



I started to put up Halloween stuff on Saturday but I didn't finish it; I just didn't have the heart for it, remembering how last year The Runt helped me out:




My God I miss that cat.

I saw a thing on 60 Minutes about Vincent Van Gogh. It turns out he completed most of his paintings in a day; sometimes only a few hours. So, is "The Starry Night" still a masterpiece if he knocked it off in an afternoon? It's really funny; I always thought that the great painters took weeks and months to complete an important piece, but turns out old Vincent there was cranking 'em out in the time it takes me to eat a bag of chips. Who knew?

I just bought the most fantastically awful soapdish EVER. I really should save this for a future Freaky Friday, but it's too good not to share:

It's a boy. On a dolphin. Painted gold. Holding a soapdish. For some reason, I'm picturing this in a Kardashian bathroom. What can I say? It was three bucks. I couldn't resist.

Love is love

After The Runt died, on April 21, at first I was in shock. I mean, two-year-old cats don't just drop dead, right?

Except when they do.


I was in shock, and then mourning, and the next few weeks after that were a horrifying scramble of tests and test results and road trips to specialists and bad bad news, when Little Girl was diagnosed with restrictive cardiomyopathy and we had to learn a New Normal, she and I.


We got the pill routine down and had more tests and she went back to hunting birds and I went back to the daily stuff of life, except that we are both missing The Runt. Very much so.


And I was thinking the other day, of how hard I am grieving the loss of The Runt. Frankly, I am grieving his loss just as much as I did for Rocky, which hardly seems possible. I mean, I had Rocky for fifteen years. The Runt was still practically a kitten; how could I possibly miss him as much as I had missed Rocky? How could the grief be this strong?

And then, over the past weekend, I read this:

"Sometimes love is for a moment
Sometimes love is for a lifetime
Sometimes a moment is a lifetime."





Yeah. That's it.