Hope — There’s No Keeping It Down

My cat, Fred, had been missing for a few days now. He must have gotten out through the garage when we were getting rid of packing boxes. We moved here a few months ago, but were saving the boxes–oh, that just doesn’t matter.

He is MY boy, he sits on my lap. He’s soft, a flame-point mix with white fur and crossed blue eyes. He’s very timid. And he’s gone.

I keep telling myself we’ll find him, then I sink into depression and tell myself he’s gone, he’s too naive to make it out in the wild on his own. I convince myself to stop worrying and thinking, I’ve called around, I’ve put a notice on Next Door, and even on a national pet connection site. I called our old neighbors, in case he somehow makes his way back to our old house on the other side of town. It has been known to happen (that’s called HOPE).

As I’m doing other things, I go to the door and call him. He’s such a little scaredy-cat, so timid. Being cross-eyed, everything must look scary to him. After reconciling myself to the fact that he might be gone–hit by a car or taken by the coyotes or the huge dogs around here, I still keep catching myself watching out the windows to see a flash of white, and calling for him.

I suppose that’s what hope is. I can’t make it go away. Until I either have him back, or know that he is gone, I can’t make myself stop hoping he will return. Hope must be a gift, something to keep you from falling into a cauldron of self-despair while you’re waiting for the bad thing to go away. Like a virus or an illness or a condition.

My husband just got a pacemaker and it’s making him feel so much worse. I’ve gained 18 pounds in the last two months. How does a person even do that? But there’s that hope–I will try harder to get those pounds to shrink back down, and he will visit the cardiologist today to figure how why his new hardware is wonky.

And Fred will come home.