This year's Christmas card.

Merry Christmas!   One week and counting!

Have you seen the Christmas Dog video yet?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KG3O6UBLGbA&utm_source=delivra&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=A%20dog%20named%20Grandma&mid=688598711&ml=14532589

Back around Thanksgiving, when TriLady sent this video, I saved it, thinking it would be the perfect email Christmas Card. 

Little did I know.

The visit to the county animal shelter last week was an eye opener.

 
FIVE roomfuls of stray cats.     

Cages fill all the rooms nearly to the ceiling.  It takes some time, peering into each and every one. 

More cages line the winding hallways. Cats, dogs, turtles, even snakes.  

At a T in one hallway there is a rolling cart, parked, and stacked with another dozen cages.  Right at eye level, a tiny Chihuahua shivers.  He is wearing a child's polo shirt.  The shirt is faded red.  It is too big for him, and too thin to be warm.     


I wish I had found Gypsy there.  Simultaneously, I am glad she was not there.

 "Do you update the website with the list of strays every day?" I ask, on my way out.

"Oh no," comes the reply, "We update it hourly."

Oh.   Dear.



It's the Sunday after the Boat Parade. 

Last night's party seemed a fair success by all the standard measures.  The last guest didn't leave until 1am.  Nobody passed out, fell in the fire, puked on the lawn, or rode the unicycle into the pool (to my knowledge, anyway.)  We are both feeling a bit immobilized this morning. 

It's been cool and damp and bleak all day. 
 I think of one last spot to look for Gypsy, a field of weeds with a scrawny stand of papayas behind the church down the block. 

I methodically clean up party stuff, waiting until afternoon so church will be out.  Still actively searching 2 weeks after blitzing the neighborhood with fliers and posters, is one of those things that might be perceived as crazy cat-lady behavior.  I'd rather search privately for now, and reserve my crazy cat-lady status for later years.  

Once in the field, I don't know what I'm looking for, exactly. 

I feel certain that if Gypsy were strong enough to sustain herself catching field mice, she would surely be able to get herself home to a full dish of 9-Lives twice a day and her favorite quilt. 

So I suppose I am looking for a body - or maybe bits of fur left by vultures.  There are no cars at the church, and not so much as a mouse in the field.  The only sign of life is a squirrel scooting solo up an oak tree near the chapel.    

Picking the burrs one by one from my new jacket, I walk home the long way, touring the neighborhood bordering ours. 

My fifty/fifty theory insists that Gypsy is just as likely safe and warm as dead.  

I spend equal time checking the ditch along the road and covertly perusing the front windows of every home I pass, hoping to see Gypsy perched on the back of some couch, staring back out at me.   

I do see a stripey young cat with tufted ears watching me from the high sill of a bedroom window.  Like some neighborhood pervert I stop dead in the street and peer at the window, not daring to walk into the yard to see better.  The cat, noticing me noticing it, vaults off the windowsill, and just for a second, it's long stripey tail is plain to see. 

Not Gypsy. 

But thankfully, a skitty kitty.  What if it hadn't jumped?  What if I hadn't glimpsed that tail?  How weird would it be to go to a neighbors door and ask to see their cat?  I suddenly realize there's no way I could ever bring myself to knock.


So, this whole business of cat search, as dismal as this crappy, cold day, comes crashing to an end. 


The posters can stay up a couple more weeks.  I can still hope.  For a while.  Whenever I open the door in the morning.  Or the phone shows a local number calling. 

But it's been two weeks.  It is time to stop beating the bushes (literally) and checking the ditches on bleak Sunday afternoons. 

If she were able, she would be home.  If she were findable, I would have found her. 

Frankly, as I type this, I am trying to think up a way to change the subject and gracefully segue to some more cheery topic.


That's when I remembered the Christmas Dog Video that TriLady sent.

I'm glad I saved it. 

You never know when you are going to need a good laugh.

Let's watch it again.

And if it speaks to you, I know where there's a chihuahua who needs a new shirt for Christmas.  And a home to wear it in.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KG3O6UBLGbA&utm_source=delivra&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=A%20dog%20named%20Grandma&mid=688598711&ml=14532589