The triangle cat hunt

PLEASE BE THERE. It was almost midnight in Europe when the words flashed across the messaging screen. I had rewarded myself for a good day of writing with a computer game that kept going and going.

"What's up?" I answered Susan in Boston.

“Morgana is gone,” Susan typed.

Morgana is my daughter’s cat, who moved only yesterday from Boston to Leesburg, VA so Llara could take up her new job.

“How” I messaged back.

The people who changed the glass in Llara’s new apartment had let her out. Let may be the wrong word. Morgana, unlike her feline sister the Lady Guinevere (Gwen) is an explorer deploring Gwen’s under-the-bed style of life. Gwen has never been on the street. Morgana came to Llara as a foundling after college kids going home for the summer threw her out to fend for herself. Except for moves, she is not an outdoors cat but loves to escape whatever apartment is home to visit neighbours. I suspect she wanted to see who else lived in the new building.

Susan told of my daughter’s pain and the hunt plans as well as her helplessness being so far away across land. I was equally useless to help an ocean away.

There are times like this that you want to be there to do something useful, not offer verbal support. However, I still telephoned. Llara said the cat had been spotted around 1 a.m. outside Llara’s building. Morgana is grey and white angora and looks different than most cats, little chance it would be another cat. At least Llara knew she hadn’t fallen from the second story.

Perhaps I should add that I am more a dog person, but these two felines had wormed their way into my heart while they shared my Geneva flat. I still miss having pets, but when I am tempted to get a dog I wait until 10 p.m. on a rainy night and force myself to take a walk. Knowing its optional usually cures me of the puppy blues. None of this was important at the moment. I only wanted Llara to find her cat and to stop hurting. I wanted Morgana to be all right and cursed myself for every morning that I resented the cat who appeared on my chest, stroking my face not in love, but in placing her breakfast order.

Llara was walking her new neighbourhood on the way to the store to get paper to put up signs. She had already made the acquaintance of several neighbours.

With nothing more to do but to send good thoughts across the Atlantic I went to bed, but not to sleep. Around 3 a.m. the phone ran. “The lost is found,” Susan said. A very dirty cat was back in the apartment when Llara got home from her paper buying, mostly likely put there by the superintendent.

I rolled over in bed, feeling relieved. My daughter was no longer hurting, which even though she is a fully-capable adult, competent to handle her own problems, is a state I still would like to protect her from. I know I can’t and shouldn’t, but I still wish I had been there to walk the streets of Leesburg looking for the cat, rather than an ocean away offering moral support.