Requiem for a Cat

Zaeka (my cat, my companion, my headache and my main object of conversation) has disappeared. She bolted from me out of fear on Sunday during our "Get Zaeka Adjusted to Outdoors" romp, and the last I saw her she popped through a broken window into my building's basement. Where could she have gone, you ask? God only knows.

The search for Zaeka began immediately...I put food at the two places she could have entered or exited the basement. A neighbor who has the key to the basement opened the gate to let me walk around for a while. I called for her and psssted for her and got no response. The next day at school I had a collegue make a little advertisement for me to put on the building's doors. And I played the waiting game.

The search has had it's lighthearted moments. Tuesday afternoon a little boy from fourth grade rang my doorbell after school and shouted they had found her by the place where I had last seen her. I followed him with flashlights and some food and found a crowd of fourth and fifth graders huddled around the door trying to block her in. But when I decended the stairs and crouched in the corner where they had seen her run, I found nothing.

When I went back outside, I found a pack of ferral cats who all look exactly like Zaeka...I assume it was one of them that the kids saw. I was sorry to disappoint them so.

Everytime I go out, I walk by that broken window and call in to her. I wander the back of the building where she could have escaped through another open window...I'm sure the neighbors think I'm crazy. But they all ask about her, if I've found her. One couldn't ask for more friendly people.

But as it looks like she might be really lost...and I mean GONE...I will send this out into the world as a bit of a reverie for her.

She was a cat named "Rabbit." She liked sunny spots and the small of my back when I laid in bed, her pink nylon cube mom and dad sent from the States, licking everything, climbing the curtains, pooping when I had just cleaned the litterbox, sleeping on my radiator in the winter, and chirping at flies and other intruders.

She sighed when she settled...a deep, contented sigh. She ate very slowly. She put her ears back to hunt me. She wasn't scared to bite. She wasn't scared to scratch. When she was really pissed, she even spat.

She was not a gentle cat, but she was spunky. She was pretty, and I'm very sure she knew it. Wherever she is, I hope she overcame her fear of outdoors and is having fun hunting for real.

Goodbye, Zaeka. I hope all is well.