My Lost Cat Jadzia - Time to start saying Goodbye...
On the evening of August 4th, nearly two months ago, my cat Jadzia went out of the bedroom window to go catting around, as she had so many times during her more than ten years of life, only this time she never returned.
Since the night she inexplicably disappeared I have searched my house and the surrounding area very thoroughly. I have been through ever corner and crevice in the attic and the basement. I searched the surrounding area, combed through the adjacent creek bed, and even scoured a vacant lot nearby after crawling under a chainlink fence. I have wallpapered the neighborhood with lost cat signs, visited all of the East Bay shelters several times, put up lost cat notices on online neighborhood bulletin boards and visited the local vets. I'm still doing that, but I'm now also checking the local pet rescues, since one of them might have picked her up if she had been brought to a shelter shortly after she disappeared.
It's been less than a year since we lost her brother Bashir, who was struck and killed by a car. Now she is gone.
It is maddening. If she had been badly injured by a car or a wild animal, I suspect I would've found her body by now. She has a chip, so if she were brought to a shelter or a vet they should've been able to identify her. There we some recent incidences of coyotes killing cats in the area, but in all of those cases remains were found. Still, the possibility exists that she may have been killed by a wild animal or a car, and she was so badly mangled that she was never recovered. Or she may be in someone's home, someone who thought she was a stray, but in that case that someone should've seen the lost cat signs.
There is the possibility she was taken to a shelter, and maybe she has been adopted. I doubt she was quickly euthanized, unless she was badly hurt, but in those cases they should've found the chip. I've been told that there are incidences where a chipped animals was not identified with a scan because someone did a quick wave through and just didn't find it. But that's also unlikely.
The worst part of all of this is the not knowing. Has she gone over the Rainbow Bridge? Or is she curled up and purring in someone's lap? I just want to know. I hope and pray that someone else has her and that she's okay, getting fed and having a nice warm place to sleep. But even if that's not the case I still want to know what happened to her.
At this point I'm not optimistic. I am beginning to doubt that I'll ever find out, that she's probably gone for good. I have heard about lost cats coming back after weeks or months, or even years, but she never strayed far from the house.
I will still check in on the shelters, and I'll put up the last of the lost pet signs, even though some that were put up back in early August are still up. In the meantime, I will perform a ritual I had been putting off: I have her brother Bashir's ashes, and I have always been meaning to spread some of them in two of his favorite places: In the creek bed where he liked to hang out, and on the large tree stump not too far from there where he liked to survey his kingdom. I have not fully gotten over Bashir's loss. I even had a dream about him the other night. I was in the creek bed, and I could hear his distinctive meow, even though I couldn't see him. Now, with his sister gone, I believe it's finally time to go through with that ritual. Who knows? Maybe it will summon her return.
In any case, my upcoming Bashir ritual is also to say goodbye to Jadzia as as well as to him. She may yet still return, but just in case, I want to start to say goodbye so I can reconcile myself with the most likely outcome: That she is gone for good, and that she's never coming back.
This is a very Jadzia picture
of Jadzia. Always serious
and dignified
Jadzia and her brother Bashir.
Jadzia was never the same after
she lost her brother last year.