Seeking Closure

Sometimes you don't get to tie up all your loose ends. It seems that the child in me comes out when one of those loose ends is a character in my story. And I find myself having lots of childish thoughts...namely, 'it's not fair'. A lot of childish thoughts are steeped in truth as well as in pure emotion.
A few days before we invited our two wee pups to the farm on the first of October, we saw Clover cat for our last time. Once a week had passed by with no sign of her, Rich got the bad feeling.
Let's take it back a bit. Being allergic to cats, he resisted my attempts to bring barn cats to the farm. A band of wily squirrels is to thank for pushing him right over the edge. And so we brought a sister duo home from a backyard shed in the suburbs. Accidental litters to some are treasures to others. We named the gals Clover and Rye, had them spayed and gave them the keys to their new kingdom. After getting acclimated in the barn, they reigned over the barn, the farmyard and the fields. And guess what? I found Rich talking baby talk I'd only heard him talk to our infants and a young Mel dog years ago. Maybe baby talk is hyperbolic...but he was so gentle with them, enjoying their kitten antics and their rubs against his ankles, tails curling around his shins. Call it toxoplasmosis putting him under their spell ;), but he developed a real affection for them pretty quickly. I'd find his camera reel crowded with pictures of them and I'd get morning texts while cooking the kids breakfast, "fed the cats :)".

The kids loved on them, inappropriately hugging and squeezing them, always up in their faces. Maybe being that they were young animals themselves, the kittens could understand the innocence in the aggressive affection May (3.5) and Jack (.5) showed them. The kids came up with the cats, each species growing into their skin and their lives here on the farm. May learned not to 'let the cats ride on the slide' and the cats learned how to get out of the kids' reach when they needed space. But they always came when the mood was right to sit on a lap or be the kids' dolls.


Like a flower unfurling in bloom, the girls started to unpack their personalities: Rye essentially showing her true colors as a dog-cat who loved belly rubs, being fed, and socializing any time of the day or night. She would be the one waiting on the stoop for us to come out for the day. We still make memories of her sitting on the little table next to the window peeking into the house. The kids come out of their rooms to put their hands on the other side of the glass and say good morning. Clover on the other hand was 100% feline...supreme huntress and occasionally social to temper her solitary hours. Sleek and slender, she would eat some of the food we provided for her and let her sister finish the rest...then off to find field mice and once even...a rabbit nearly her size. Yin and Yang, that's what we should have named them.

So it wasn't abnormal to see sisterless Rye at the breakfast bowls in the morning. Oftentimes, Clover would come running over from the woods when Rye was a few bites in. Other times, her breakfast would sit until I was done with my morning watering of the plant trays. There always seemed to be an understanding with Rye that Clover's bowl was not to be touched. They got each other.
Rich would worry about Clover from time to time when she wouldn't show up. After all, all that was keeping her on the farm was the bond we had with her and the notion that she would always have basic needs and overzealous snuggles available on a daily basis. But she was nimble and would scale the frosty barn roof, lurk in the tallest boughs of our trees, awaiting a foolish bird, and hunt the farthest reaches of the pastures. One time, she came home with one of her gorgeous green eyes just completely messed up. Was it a fight? A fall? A rabbit fighting back? A stray rabied cat? I treated her eye at home and it healed remarkably well. It would be just another story in her book of adventures.

One morning at the end of September, Clover didn't show for breakfast. One day turned into two, and then a week passed. Rich continued to fill both girls' bowls, likely in denial that Clover might be gone. I simply didn't believe it. I thought, she is probably keeping distance with the new canines in town and will show the next time they are tucked inside taking a puppy nap. I think it was the two-week mark for me when I realized that we likely wouldn't experience the last scene of Homeward Bound. Remember, when Sassy the cat comes trudging over the hill back to her home which she had been lost from for days? Remember the joy in her girl Hope's eyes (and heart) when Sassy wasn't in fact gone for good?
Distracted and busied with puppy training and play, the kids were none-the-wiser. And so when I told them after dinner one night that Clover might be gone, first there was stupor. Then there were questions...will she come back? Did a coyote eat her (Jack lives in fear of coyotes...a healthy fear which keeps the wild child from leaving the farmhouse at night when he wakes up)? Can we try to find her? Should we get another cat? This question pained me as much as it did when Jack prematurely asked if we could replace Mel. Too soon. Too soon.
And Rye? She put on weight over those two weeks from Rich's refusing not to fill Clover's bowl. I've never seen Rye so big. And now, I've never seen her more cuddly. Clearly she is looking to fill a big physical gap in her life...nearly tripping us as we move around the farm. If Rich's allergy wasn't so bothersome, I'd be tempted to bring her in to the house that she has always peered into in the hope that maybe one day...
It was about at week 2 that I got the bad feeling and Rich and I tore the farm up, opening the cellar just in case, checking the trailer, every nook and cranny where she could have gotten caught. What we were looking for was closure. And that night, we sat around the kitchen...just allowing our minds to run free and unpack all the questions we had. Do you think she got swallowed up by the neighbor's combine as it harvested a field of corn, causing mice to run left and right for cover? Is it the owl who we heard return to the property the week before Clover went missing? Did the smart fox who lives in the far field finally cross the line? Did she possibly wander off to an odd neighbor's house to be absorbed into their clan of indoor cats? The questions and fears started to get odder and odder. Clover was not social and there is no way that she could have been snatched by a human! A little bit of post-traumatic ideation came to my mind when I wondered if she had been harboring a secret, debilitating and fatal illness like Meldog, and ultimately walked off to the woods to see it through.
Three weeks without Clover, May and I were on the way home from school. We crossed the bike path which runs alongside the farm and May yelled,"I think I saw Clover!". We parked the car and headed to the bike path, my inner child believing that my real child was about to bring a fairytale ending to reality. The end of the fairytale would be the beginning of the rest of our life together with Clover, the way it should be. We would tell the epic story of how the little huntress roamed a little too far from home. But my adult brain was telling me that Clover would know her way home from the bike path. Cats can easily roam two miles from home and know their way back. Nevertheless, with hearts racing, we marched down the path excitedly, calling her name. A couple of cats came to the kisses and cat calls. It's one of the first times I wasn't happy to socialize with the Bike Path Cats. We just wanted Clover.
I had my adult face on, and my mushy kids heart crying in the inside. I told May that it was a good try and so close! She was more accepting of the failure than me. Jack had his grumpy face on as we offset his routine of getting right home to an afternoon snack and a library book read.
Maybe we will continue to see Clover. Rich saw her the other day in the treeline, until it wasn't her, but our neighbor's nosy cat. Of course it wasn't Clover, no cat has her sleek coat and white nose. I suppose it's the nature of life in the great outdoors, with animals who coexist with us but live lives of freedom, somewhat mysterious to us. Clover cat is now part of the wild world that she so loved. And the next chapter begins, with Rye cat warming up to her new dog friends, but not without reminding them to respect their elders with some good claw swipes when they get too friendly. My heart-our hearts, will go on.

Thank you for reading :).
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