Winston

I think we knew something was wrong when he didn’t come home Sunday night but Carrie and I never imagined the worst. We kept telling each other that, although out of character, in his younger days Winston sometimes went out catting around for a day or so then showed up on the front porch singing for his supper.

Last night while I walked our street, flashlight in one hand, shaking a can of Pounce in the other, our neighbors informed me that another neighbor down the street found our kitty, Winston dead in a driveway on Sunday morning. He was on the losing end of a fight with a wild animal. Sobbing I knocked on the man’s door who found him to ask if he still had Winston. He took him to the SPCA, not knowing it was our cat without a collar to identify him. We tried in the past to get Winston to wear a collar. Early attempts resulted in his getting it halfway off with his bottom jaw stuck until someone got home and helped. Then we tried break away collars which he learned very quickly are easy to break away.

My heart is heavy today. I am sad. I am angry. I want to go home and curl up in a ball and take a nap but I know I will only miss his insistent meowing to wake up and feed him yet again. I will miss the thump of his paws hitting the cabinet each morning when he jumped up to eat. I will miss the dramatic way he would rear up with paws flat on the glass door asking to come in. I would give anything to have him sit next to me on the couch kneading my legs and purring despite the fact that in the past this behavior often sent me over the edge.

I am sure this is all too dramatic for a cat but I really don’t care right now. I am sure I will be better tomorrow and better still the next day but again I don’t care right now. Right now I want to mourn my cat. I want to miss him. I want to cry. If he’s up there in Heaven and I know he is I want him to know he was loved and missed.