someone is stealing cats

october 27

Someone is stealing cats from my neighborhood. A few months ago a siamese named Emma, who had been a stray and was taken in by my neighbors, was taken by a woman in an SUV. There were witnesses.

One of my cats, Gray, went missing a few weeks ago. I've assumed she was hit by a car. It happens. Two cats got hit by cars in front of my house last year. A* hit a cat a few years ago. Whatever it was it was something that made it impossible for her to come home because she wouldn't just run away. She loved us. We loved her. And more importantly, she and her sister, Cowgirl, adored each other. She wouldn't leave her sister.

The boys who rent the house down the street posted signs all over the neighborhood this week of their kitty, Zoe, who is missing. Again, I know this cat, and know enough about cats in general, and know she wouldn't just run away.

I want to put a big sign on my parking strip that says "STOP STEALING CATS."

I'm afraid, though, that this will freak people out. I am the crazy cat lady of the block, since I feed the four cats that have been abandoned by ass-clowns who were either arrested or evicted from their homes on our street. There is always a herd of cats sitting on my porch. No one bugs me about this, except my husband, but I don't want to go overboard.

***

We miss Gray. We miss her quiet little mew. We miss her circling around on our laps, niney seven times, before she gets comfortable and passes out. I will always remember the first time she slept in my lap, when she was a baby and I wasn't supposed to be getting attached to her because WE WERE ARE NOT KEEPING THESE KITTENS. We miss her yellow eyes rimmed with white fur that fades to dark gray, which was quite striking.

I'm all mixed up in my tense here because I'm still making that transistion from thinking she'll come home any second now and accepting that she's gone. For days I would wander around our block calling for her, full well knowing she wasn't going to jump out of the bushes and run ahead of me, daring me to chase her home. I had dreams I found her, blocks away from our house, and that she'd just forgotten her way home. Those gave way to dreams where I'd find a gray cat in my kitchen and wasn't sure if it was her or not. She's already fading from my memory.

The hardest part has been dealing with her sister, Cowgirl. You can't explain to a cat that her sister is gone. She doesn't understand why Gray doesn't come when she cries for her. She bored and sad and needy and there's not much we can do for her. I've never witnessed a cat mourn. It's heartbreaking.

A* says we should call the police, just so they have a record of this. I don't want to think about what people who steal cats do to them. I want to think they're hoping for rewards to be posted so they can get money. I want to think they're selling them to little girls who want pretty, gray kitties. I don't want to think about it.

- october 27