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2005-08-29 - 11:46 p.m.
One week ago tonight (August 22, 2005) was the last time I saw my cat Maci. We have had her for 16 years and while we knew she was getting old and probably didn't have many years left, we weren't expecting to lose her this soon. There was no indication that she was sick.
Last Monday night when she was in the house she seemed happy and hungry and just the normal Maci. She wanted to go back outside late Monday night and so my mom let her out. Tuesday morning she wasn't at the door crying for food. And I didn't see her when I left 2 hours later.
We weren't aware that she was missing until that evening when she wasn't there to greet either one of us. And then Mom and I realized that neither one of us had seen nor fed her that morning.
We tried to remain optimistic, each morning hoping she'd be on the front porch waiting. Each night, praying that she would be there when we drove up. But it's been a week and with each passing day it has become clearer that she's has died.
We've walked through our yard, through neighbor's yards, Joe even opened the manhole and looked down the drain which is located near my house at the end of th cul de sac. But no Maci.
I know that it's common for cats to go off when they know they're going to die because we had a cat do this 8 years ago. 3 weeks after Mia went missing I found her in the very back of our yard while cutting grass. While it was very upsetting to find her like that, we at least got to bury her and have some closure.
Although I'm not an animal crazy kind of person and would never go online and post an obitury for my pet (like my step-mom did a couple of years ago for her dog wherein she named Lauren and I as the surviving step-sisters) I haven't been able to say goodbye to Maci. In fact, I haven't even told many people because we just didn't know for sure if she was gone. And I didn't really want to believe it myself.
But it's been a week and for the first time I'm grieving. I've never had a pet for so long. And she was, whether I took full responsibility for her or not, my cat, especially after Lauren moved out. And most nights she slept with me at the end of my bed.
Because we're not the kind of people who take pictures of their pets and put them on our desks at work or consider them pseudo-children, we don't have a lot of pictures of Maci. But this past Christmas I went into the living room and found Maci curled up underneath the Christmas tree asleep. It was dark and I didn't want her to wake up so I quickly grabbed the camera and snapped a picture. It's blurry because my camera sucks butt, but it's the only one we've taken in recent years of her.
I realize that by doing this I've just joined the club of people of whom I make fun. But I needed to just do something to acknowledge that she's gone and that I miss her terribly.
