Lost and Found...

So, one of our cats went missing. We were eating dinner on Tuesday evening when we realised that no one had seen him since Monday afternoon. Now Mo will quite often disappear for hours at a time, but not usually overnight, so we were puzzled and a bit concerned, but fully expected him to be there the following morning…but he wasn’t. 

We checked the shed, garage, spare rooms but no sign. Me, being me, decided he had drowned in a nearby dyke while trying to catch a frog. My husband thought he’d got into an open vehicle, his favourite thing to do, after catching frogs, and been driven off to goodness knows where. My son, on the other hand, was convinced that he’d crawled into one of the sewage pipes being laid nearby, and been sealed into a hideous fate! Suffice to say that we were all really unsettled by his absence. Every time the phone rang I expected it to be the vet saying a dead cat had been brought in and his microchip said it was ours - and sod’s law demands that we had more cold calls yesterday than in the past six weeks!

The power of the Book of Face!

By the afternoon I started to get really upset and posted a photo on Facebook, asking for help to find him. Then I started to cry and found it very difficult to stop. Every sad emoji that my friends posted started me off again until my eyes looked like peeled tomatoes. All of this over a cat. Okay, a very cute cat, but still a cat.

The thing that disturbed us the most was not knowing what had happened - was he lying dead somewhere or, worse injured and unable to get home? Was he locked in a garage that may not be opened for weeks? Had he been catnapped / shot / poisoned? Its amazing what your imagination can do to fill a void of uncertainty if you let it. All of us felt in limbo. Every time our other cat walked past the window we jumped and we were constantly expecting to see a black and white body under a hedge. My son felt sick, and even my appetite was unusually absent.

I'm home!

Then, at a little after 10pm, in he marched! Miaowing, demanding food and drink as if nothing has happened! He was very thirsty, and I suspect he’d been shut in somewhere but, other than that, he was fine. He ate some food, had a drink and went straight out again! Obviously not as traumatised as us!

Just before Mo walked in, we had been watching the news about the terrible Grenfell Tower fire in London. There were people being interviewed who were desperately searching for their families who lived in the tower block and hadn't heard from them all day. It put worrying about a cat into sharp perspective. Whole families were missing - brothers, sisters, parents, children. Horrible. Hopefully most of these people will be found safe and well in the various emergency centres, but undoubtedly some will have perished in the blaze. Again, terrible, but a definite, if tragic outcome. 

Every year in Britain there are thousands of people reported missing - over 130,000 in 2015-16. Whilst most of these people return home very quickly, 2% go missing for more than a week - that’s 2600 people! How do their families cope? Living with the dichotomy of hoping for the best and bracing themselves for the worst. I simply can’t imagine what that is like.

Real people, not just statistics...

Anybody who saw the recent Britain’s Got Talent can’t fail to have been moved by the Missing Person’s Choir - a group of people with missing family members, using a public forum to get their message out there in the hope of some new information. Seeing their photographs projected while the choir sung turned them from being statistic into being someone's child or parent.

I wrote recently about picking up the pieces of your life after the loss of a loved one (It's Okay to Laugh,too), but I am in awe of those people who have suffered a bereavement but not a death and yet carry on with their lives. I couldn't focus on anything yesterday, and it was just my cat that was missing. Enduring that feeling of uncertainty for any length of time over a family member or close friend is unimaginable. If you have time, check out the Missing People website, type in your area and have a look at the photos - maybe you have seen one of these people and could help reunite them with their family. How amazing it would be to help someone enjoy an 'I'm home' moment.

Only letting him out on a lead from now on!