The following day I went to my parents house and cleaned up the mess I had made in the attic. The tantalizing dream of magic had all but evaporated from my mind, and now all I could see on the horizon was the uphill climb of responsibility.
That night, I returned home with another box of “goodies,” as my mom called them, and several bags of old clothes. My dogs celebrated my return as I lugged the boxes and bags inside and placed them with the other box. I was accumulating quite a collection.
“Are you hungry?” I said to the dogs. They wagged their tails enthusiastically and practically jumped for joy at the suggestion. I prepared their food as I did every night, but as I reached for the cat food, I realized that I hadn’t actually seen the cat.
“That’s strange,” I said, placing the dog’s dishes on the ground for them. “He never misses a meal.”
I could feel my throat tightening as I imagined the worst case scenario. While my cat was in great shape for his age, he was definitely old. I prepared myself and began to search the house for the cat. “Maybe he got locked in the bathroom or something.” I said to myself, hopefully.
After searching every nook and cranny in my house, I had not found my cat. While I was relieved to not find my cat dearly departed, it was disconcerting to not find any cat. He had never escaped before, and I hadn’t found any holes he could have squeezed into.
That night, I was lying in bed staring at the ceiling going over the events of the week. I couldn’t believe that to top it all off, my cat had gone missing. “My therapist is going to have a heyday with this.” I thought to myself.
