Sad Realization

The day I came back from Florida, Coco got out of the house, which is not unusual. He's always been an indoor/outdoor cat who loves being outside. We always brought him in at night, and only on rare occasions would he spend a night outside. In fact, he has never been gone longer than a day in all the 8 years we've had him. So after two days of not seeing him, we started to get worried. I put up "Lost Cat" fliers on the mailboxes, we talked to neighbors, we checked the pound. No sign. We drove through the neighborhood, looking for Coco, dead or alive. Nothing.

It's been 10 days now. And as sad as it is, we've kind of given up hope. It seems that Coco is gone.

We've lost several pets over the years. Our first two dogs died from getting hit by cars. Sofia's hermit crab died. But Coco had been our rock. He was our first family pet and we'd had him the longest. He was hitting middle-age, so we were starting to think about the fact that we would only have him another 8 years or so, at the most. This loss was certainly unexpected.

In a way, 10 days doesn't seem very long, like we shouldn't write him off yet. But he's never been gone this long, so my internal realist is telling me to let him go.

And I don't blame it entirely on getting a new dog. Sure, Coco didn't care for dogs, but he lived with Lily for about a year. And he was getting along pretty well with Vivien. One time I had Viv in my lap and Coco came up beside me to be petted. So I don't blame it on the dog.

Strange thing, none of us are too emotional about this, even though we loved that cat more than anything. I think because we don't know for sure what happened, the emotional impact is lessened. It's far more disturbing to find your pet dead in the road than to just have them mysteriously disappear.

It would be easy to blame ourselves: we shouldn't have let him go outside. But the way we see it, we gave him the best of both worlds. He loved being inside with us, and he loved enjoying the outdoors. Yes, maybe he would still be with us if we had never let him go out, but we know he's lived a far happier life for the past 8 years having it both ways. 8 years of blissful life are better than 16 years of cooped-up unhappiness.

Instead of assuming he's dead somewhere, I think I prefer to think of Coco as moving on, like when a kid leaves for college. Maybe he wanted to see the world. Maybe he found another life that gave him something we couldn't. But I'll always miss our big fat Coco, his big flabby boobies, his dog-like affection. He was my sole companion in the moving truck on our 3-day trek from Florida to Arizona, and didn't complain despite his disdain for riding in vehicles. He often slept on our bed, curled up in the crook of my arm on cold nights.

Yep. He was special. I doubt there will ever be another cat quite like him.

Family self-portrait, taken in bed one lazy Saturday morning