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I’ve dreamed of Goldy almost every night for the last week or so. It’s always the same, we find him nearby, or he appears at the door. Either we find him dead or he appears at the door badly hurt. In all of them I cry and cry and cry and wake up feeling as though I’ve been crying, and very very sad.

It’s been a weird week. I’ve been crying a lot.

I haven’t written about this here, I don’t think, but I got a Mirena almost two years ago, not as birth control, but to help some serious complications of a fibroid. Yes, a single, small fibroid, caused me to nearly bleed to death a couple years ago. Anyway. The Mirena is a blessing because now I’m not dead and at this point, is my only real option, since without health insurance, I’m not likely to have a hysterectomy and for now, I think I’m okay with the Mirena. However. The fucking thing has caused me a lot of … Very Very VERY bad moods, plus I’m pretty sure hair loss. Thankfully, after about a year of really feeling I might go insane one month and, well, do something drastic (like yank the fucker out myself, bleed to death issue be damned), the Very Very Very Bad symptoms have started to lessen. But I still have some pretty drastic PMS some months. Sometimes I still get Angry. Very angry. Other months I get really super weepy.

The point is I’m choosing to blame this week’s weepiness on my ever-lovely Mood Adventures with My Mirena. David linked to this video on Facebook yesterday and I just sat here and sobbed and sobbed. If you haven’t seen it, even if you aren’t in some hormone-induced hysteria, I recommend a box of tissues handy.

On the up side of things, today it is actually warm here. I think the mercury might have passed 70! I’m no fan of heat, but this weird winter-summer was out of hand. Hopefully it will stay warm.

Yeah. The dead cat, my IUD, soldiers and the weather.

*shakes head*

Today, the three of us went out for a rare restaurant meal! We went to Val’s. If you come visit me and you are not vegetarian, we will take you to Val’s if you want. It’s very good in an old-fashioned way. They don’t take plastic payment methods, only cash, heh. Anyway, after that, Ed and Becca went home and I went to a coffee shop and wrote letters (where I can do so in peace instead of being interrupted by the chaos of them every two seconds):

See how I protect the privacy of my penpals so that my blog readers don’t stalk them or send them strange mail? If you want to write a letter to me, I would like that, and I would also protect your privacy by blurring your address when I post photos of your mail on my silly blog.

Ahem.

As I said to Annette on the back of an envelope the other day, no, I have not been sniffing the Elmer’s.

Also, I’m trying to sell a pen on ebay, something I bought a long time ago when I apparently thought such extravagance was a good idea. Everyone, please cross your fingers that there’s an enormous bidding war for my pen and that it sells for, oh, full new retail value or something.

Rebecca and I went to buy cat food the other day. Of course we always stop in to see the cats from the Humane Society. We’d love to adopt them all. When I first saw this cat, he was facing away and all I saw was his body. You can imagine my heart was beating fast, even though I knew it couldn’t really be our not-our-cat.

I’m on Day Two of a migraine. I am not happy.

You know how when you’re reading auctions at ebay or listings at etsy or whatever and the description includes something like, “comes from a smoke-free, pet-free home.” My home is not one of those. Well, smoke-free. But god, the cat hair.

I say this as I’ve just been gathering some things to send to some friends and I’m picking off cat hairs and then I look away for half a second and there’s more cat hair! Gaaah! I’m always worried I’m going to send something to someone who is deathly allergic to cats and my stuff is gonna send them to the hospital unable to breathe.

My new favorite thing is a stamp I got from Vozamer’s Etsy Shop. I wanted to buy all of the stamps, but this is the one I got (for now):

First thing I stamped it on was my kid’s forehead.

It’s been at least two weeks since we saw Goldy. Today I had my first good cry, I guess finally letting go of whatever hope I had.

Every morning when I get up, for ages now, I sit down at my desk and look out the window, checking for Goldy. Half the time I would see him curled up on the deck right outside, in the corner where there’s always sun. If I didn’t see him, I would open the window and call for him and he’d usually turn up within a couple of minutes, meowing at the door. He’d come in, have some food, then curl up on his towel at the end of the couch (he was often dusty, sometimes muddy, so I kept a towel on his spot).

I’m still looking out the window every morning.

I know he won’t be there.

I wish I’d done more.

I really miss that big orange wandering cat. He really was the best cat ever and I wish he’d stayed.

I spoke with one of our neighbors yesterday, a fellow cat lover. I knew she had tried to help out some stray kittens that were born in some shrubs at our complex, and that she has several cats herself. I knew Goldy at least was mooching food from her porch because I’d seen him there.

I’d always thought Goldy had other “I don’t LIVE here” homes, but I could never quite account for all of his time. Before Jim died, Goldy spent most of his down time at Jim’s. After Jim died, more cat lovers moved in there and Goldy continued to stop in for a meal and a nap, although his main “I don’t LIVE here” home shifted to my apartment. Goldy was also spending time with the neighbor from yesterday, sometimes coming in from the rain or cold (maybe times he tried my house and found us not home). She also told me she’d seen him at a different neighbor’s. I believe most of the rest of the time, when he wasn’t not-living-someplace, he was roaming the hill behind our complex.

I miss him. I wish he were still here. I wish I knew what happened to him. I hope whatever happened, that it was swift, not too scary or painful. Most of all, I hope he’s still alive somewhere, being pampered as he deserves.

Zoe was here for a couple of days, then Rebecca left to go spend a couple of days at Zoe’s, so it’s quiet here. Goldy still hasn’t shown up. I don’t want to give up hope, but he’s never been away this long and I just feel sick when I think about him. I’m trying not to beat myself up for not trying harder to keep him in, I know he really wanted to be out, he’d been outside so long, being cooped up made him insane. Still, I wish he were here, curled up on his spot on the couch, where he would purr while I read a book or something.

I got a new mouse. There was all this drama over the mouse situation. I had this old cordless optical mouse that I’d had for ages and loved. One day I took it all apart and blew a bunch of dust and cat hair out of it, put it back together and within a couple of days it had all but stopped working. So I used another optical cordless mouse that we had and it looked almost the same, same brand, same size, just a different finish. Thing was a piece of crap and drove me insane, so I ordered a new one and it’s great, just like the old one except hot hot red. You’re thrilled, I know.

And I’ve been reading a lot lately! I’m always reading, but sometimes I get in a book-crazy mood and it’s like I’m 12 again, finishing books super fast and diving right into the next. I finished The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick and loved it all the way through. I also read Walt Whitman: Words For America, a children’s book written by Barbara Kerley and illustrated by Brian Selznick. Whitman has been one of my favorite poets for a long time and this was a sweet book about him, concentrating mostly on his work with wounded soldiers during the Civil War. Curently I’m reading The Lamplighter by D.M. Cornish, sequel to The Monster Blood Tattoo. I also started another book by Charles Bukowski, Portions From a Wine-stained Notebook (check me out reading a book written for ADULTS!). I’ve read three stories so far and they are great Bukowski pieces, all at once sad, or angry, funny, fierce, beautiful. I think I’ve reached my limit, though, and have too many books going at once.

Today I went grocery shopping and hung out with Ed. I was going to go to Target and the pet store tomorrow, but I think I might put it off a day and just completely vegetate tomorrow, alone all day (it’s Ed’s Monday).

Maybe I’ll make some flyers and tack them up, see if anyone has seen him :(

Every day that goes by without seeing Goldy :( Ugh. Honestly, I don’t really think he’s at another house unless he got hurt again and they managed to keep him inside. It feels horrible that I might not ever even know what happened to him. I alternately keep thinking I’m going to just look out the window and see him lying in the sun on the deck, and then I think, he’s gone and I won’t see him again.

It’s really hard for me to believe someone has managed to keep him inside somewhere, he’s just not that kind of cat. All the love and good food he’s had here (I spoil him like I don’t spoil my other cats), I just don’t think he’d stay anywhere.

I wish he would just walk up, acting like nothing interesting has been going on at all and why the hell am I hugging him so tight?

When we first moved to this apartment complex, about a billion years ago when Becca was a toddler, we had an upstairs apartment before we moved to the one downstairs that we have now. Underneath us was an elderly couple that included a man named Jim, who became a good friend. He and his wife had two cats of their own and one vagrant that Jim named Goldy. Goldy is a big orange LOVE, he’s just the best cat ever. At some point, I think he must have had a home, he’s neutered and very very tame except for a slight skittishness at loud noises and sudden movements (I chalk this up to living as a hobo for all these years). Anyway, sadly, Jim and his wife have both passed on, and their relatives took their two “owned” cats, but left Goldy behind. We’ve sort of adopted him, he always knows he can get a meal and a bed when he comes here, not to mention a ton of loving. Goldy is a Grade A purrer and everyone loves to pet him. He’s very very mellow, very affectionate without being needy, and pretty tolerant of other cats, although quick to defend himself if another cat is too pushy. His only fault is his steadfast refusal to stay put. Since Jim died, Goldy (also known as Not-our-cat-Goldy) has come by at least every other day, sometimes every day for a while, to have a meal and a nap on the couch. But this boy is a Wandering Man and nothing will make him stay. I’ve tried, but he’s miserable, he hates to be indoors for more than about half a day. Twice he’s been in fights and shown up battered, and the longest I’ve been able to keep him in was about 36 hours, to tend to his wounds. In the last six months or so, he’s been slowing down a bit. He comes just about every day for weeks on end, rarely skipping a day, and staying longer, half a day most days, sometimes even overnight. He will ask to be let out to go pee in the dirt, but will come right back in. He’s not a young cat. I’ve wanted desperately for him to just STAY already. Now I haven’t seen him for 4 or 5 days and I’m so worried. In the past, it wasn’t unusual for him to not come for a few days at a time, but it’s been a long time since we went more than 24 hours without seeing him.

I always wonder if he actually DOES have a home and they wonder where the hell he is half the time and worry on the nights he sleeps here. I wonder if he just has a few halfway homes in the neighborhood. Maybe someone else has had better luck keeping him in, and he’s living a happy life on some other couch. I wish I could just see him. If I do, I’m going to try, again, to make him stay.

I’ll keep you posted.

We have a little nest area for Not-Our-Cat-Goldy. He’s such a good kitty, I just adore him. I wish he would just stay indoors all the time, and I’m still working on him, but he does.not.want.to.use.the.damn.litterbox. And when he really wants out, he’s miserable. As he gets older, he stays in longer and longer, I figure it’s only a matter of time before he’s inside all the time. In the meantime, he has his own little space at the end of the couch near the front door. Although he’s extremely laid back and loving, he’s also a little skittish in certain situations, a by-product of living outdoors all the time, is my guess, people suck. Strangers, sometimes, if they approach him too quickly, especially children, will make him run off (although he’s very easily won over if one is patient and quiet). Loud noises will occasionally spook him. And my cats don’t care for him very much. He’s very willing to get along with other cats, but mine are sort of pushy and rude. So I made him this little spot near the door, he can come in and out without much interference from the wussy indoor cats. I even give him food there on his towel. When he’s not inside, though, the other cats like his spot. So earlier he was in, then he went out, then he found out it was rainy and cold, so he came back in, to find Wombat in his spot. Usually when this happens, one of us will relocate the intruder cat, or sometimes Goldy will just sit a little way down the couch until the intruder cat moves. Today, he played with fire and tried snuggling up to the Bitchiest Cat Ever. It didn’t go too badly, much to my shock.

Since I took this, about ten minutes ago, they’re even closer as they relaxed into sleep. Although I fully expect Wombat to wake up and realize just what is going on and try to slit Not-Our-Cat-Goldy’s throat or something.