Hex

My cat ran away.

He slipped out under iron shutters and through metal bars and disappeared into Paris on Wednesday.

I made posters: CHAT PERDU, with his description on it, and some sentimental touches. I put them up all over the neighborhood, and in the shops. Most business owners are nice; 3 offered to hang my flyer but never did.

I H. A.T. E them.

I wish them small personal tragedies of a similiar nature.

I also hate the street cleaner who, each day, removes the overturned flower pot I've placed beneath my window so the cat can reach the ledge and return. FUCK YOU, you FUCKING STREET CLEANER. If my cat doesn't come back, I hold you responsible.

I've called animal control. I've notified every vet in the quartier. In the early morning and late at night when the small side street is quiet...I sneak into the private gardens that surround and call his name while I shake a bag of tuna and beef flavored treats. Today, I put my other cat in a CAT LEASH and brought him along....thinking maybe he could smell out Hex...or leave a pee scent for the lost pet to follow home. I only succeed in pissing off the good cat, and upping my reputation as a scary cat lady.

Every night, I put the remaining cat in the bathroom with his box and his treats and his nip, and sleep with the window open and the light on. This makes me feel guilty. I'm not getting much shut eye. I jerk awake each time I hear a scratch or a thump that could possibly be attributed to a feline.

So far I've had three dreams about him. In one, I'm waking from a dream to see him entagled at my feet with Marshmallow, the two twined into a fuzz-ball tucked between my shin and the wall--their favorite spot to rest and groom one another. Another night, I peered over the high garden wall of the house to see the cat slinking down the street toward me at just before dawn. Last night, a woman came to the door with a cat she believed to be Hex, and when I greeted her, I saw not my brown and white domestic shorthair, but a mini cat-leopard with spots and all. In this dream I remember thinking the woman was a STUPID BITCH for 1. getting my cat's markings wrong when the flyer boasted a color photo and 2. getting my hopes up.

I cried a lot about the cat at first, but don't much anymore because it would be shameful in spite of the fact that everyone keeps telling me it's 'jut a cat.' The children I care for have begun to forget, and my boss even told me that I needed to spend less time looking for my cat, and more time looking for a boyfriend.

I didn't have the heart to tell him that until now, I've had more luck with cats. Or that the stupid cat was a boyfriend replacement to begin with: I wanted to keep him because a CAT can be kept, plus they make your bed-for-1 feel a great deal less empty.

I keep hoping he'll come back.
Because the sad truth is I'm paralyzingly lonely,

And brokenhearted. Which was a condition, I admit now, his presence helped to bridge, and one which his absence rips asunder... in painfuly obvious ways:

I'm a lonely, unconfident, type A, plan B girl...on the chubby side, who's reached the god-forsaken point at which I put more faith in animals than people. The point at which I rely upon the goodness and steadfastness of ANIMALS for the courage to pounce on everything that's not complete in the world, or in myself.

I'm holding a vigil for this cat, even though I'm sure he's moved on to exciting allyways, or a family that doesn't stick a thermometer in his anus when he's sick (vet recommended).

He's never coming back but I'm holding vigil.

As for how much the holding hurts, I don't know if it's the pain or the embarassment that does the most dammage.

I'm holding vigik because,

"A cat is like a love story." This is what an old lady smelling of booze with matted easter-egg red hair said to me while looking over my shoulder as I fed my announcements into the photocopier at the printers.

Most other days I would have laughed. That day though, I don't remember anything except the life being knocked out of me by a freighttrain of thought, an epiphany really, on my emmotional midgitism.

A cat is like a love story. At this point I guess then ...someday in the near future...I'll have to get a new one.

The thing I wonder now is, does that make my life Tragedy, or Comedy?