Six: The Missing Cat

So this was an eventful week. It started with the flu. Both Kim and I got sick at the same time. There was puking. Luckily it only lasted 24 hours. The highlight was sickly swaying in front of the medicine selection in the grocery store clutching a box of tissue and a bottle of apple juice and trying to identify something that would help. I finally went up to some kid, handed him a box that vaguely resembled TheraFlu, and asked, "what is this for?" He was surprised but helpful.

Then two days later one of our cats (Rollie; for those of you who have encountered our cats, she's the annoying one) went missing. Vanished off the supposedly safe and ideal rooftop deck during a rainstorm. We searched the rooftops. We searched the chimneys. We made fliers and canvassed the neighborhood. We wandered the streets in the evening calling her name. The neighbors and proprietors of the neighborhood cafe, hair salon, flower stand and post office were genuinely concerned and suspiciously helpful. They had cat stories with happy endings. They studied the flyer and proclaimed they would look for her. They posted the flyer, with no prompting, in the windows of their shops. I felt like I was in Europe or something.

By the third day, our lovely and charming downstairs neighbors/landlords Michael and Eva were crawling around the rooftops with us, looking in chimneys. This was humiliating, hilarious and depressing.

People called with leads, resulting in encounters with several neighborhood cats, none of them Rollie. After three days, we were pretty sure she was gone for good.