This is going to be a sad one, dear reader.
Most of you who've followed me for a long time are familiar with my pets. Long-time readers also know I always write a poem for my cats when they die. I've never actually had one disappear, although I had a close call with Taro last year. He was only missing for 5 days, though. Nix has been gone for over a month. I guess I have to post this.
Not Knowing
We tell ourselves a story about what happened to us.
I say, "She ran away with her boyfriend." And that is true.
I say, "I cheated Death with Taro. I owed Death a cat." And that is not true, but it feels true because it is story-shaped.
I say Death came walking, looking like a flirty tabby, and he said to her,
"I let the little one go, so I am owed. You are old, and I have many mice in my kingdom of bones."
And she said, "I am bored here, and the little ones annoy me," so she went away with him joyfully into the night.
I say, "You cannot have outdoor cats in the Pacific Northwest. They make it until they don’t."
I say, "The urban coyote is voracious here and I should have known, should have known."
I say, "She would have rather gone outside and risked it."
I say, "I should have made her stay in."
I say, "She went out every night for two years. Why did she leave the yard with him? Why?"
I say, "I bought a radio collar. I made her wear it until I became complacent."
I say, "She has a tipped ear. Maybe they someone thought she was feral."
I say, "She might have approached someone...if she was desperate."
I say, "Maybe she’ll come back."
Here is what I know: Her first year of life was hard and left permanent scars, all of them invisible.
She was spayed before we met, with little or nothing for the pain, and returned to a dumpster.
She was not feral.
She lived with me for twelve years and traveled thousands of miles.
She was soft and slept on my bed and purred when she saw me.
She chased her own tail. She was very fearful. She was hard to train. She was intelligent.
She was my baby girl.
I miss her.
She really did leave the yard with a handsome tabby, who trilled at her and flirted with her relentlessly, even though she's been spayed for well over a decade. I hold out the faint hope that she simply ran away with her boyfriend and chose a new home. She was 13 years old and never a risk-taker, but love makes us blind. She was chipped, and I continue to do all the things, but after a month of calling and looking...I don't have a lot of hope. To add irony to injury, I just finished installing a screened porch on the back of my house specifically so that my cats can breathe the free air without risk. She missed it by a month. If you want to see more pictures of her, I put a bunch up here.
Also, on IG, but IG makes me crop them oddly. I did put a video of her there. You can hear her odd little meow.
Nim certainly misses her. He went off his food for a day. They've been together a long time. Nim will be 19 in August, and he has now outlived every other remotely contemporary companion. He has been playing with Taro and Mochi more lately and sometimes sleeping outside their door (they get put up at night because they are hoodlums). Previously, he seemed to enjoy evening "senior time," but with Nix gone...not so much. I would put him with the young gentleman at night, but I know he would be howling to be let out within an hour. They don't see why they can't wrestle with the old man like he was 2.
Some good news: I finished Arcove's Bright Side! At 140,000 words, it is a proper novel and 3.5x as long as Distraction. Now it needs to marinate while I write something else. Then I can edit it. Then the book will go off to beta readers/typo-destroyers. Then I do one more pass and it's finished. This process takes varying lengths of time, but I estimate a June release. You can pre-order it here if you like.
I have added a whopping 200,000 words to the Hunters Universe in a little over 6 months. Those books got me out of my pandemic daze and were the most fun thing I've written in a long time. Now I think I am ready to tackle the Sleipner Verse. More about that in the next email.
What Else is Happening
Distraction now has a gorgeous paper version! You can order it from Amazon, or you can wait a minute and order it signed from me (I'll let you know when it's in stock). The ebook is only available directly from me.
Rish has started recording the audio for Distraction.
The Hunters Unlucky audio marathon continues to run at the 3 dollar level of my Patreon feed. We're about to finish the main novel and start into Lullaby. I think that Distraction audio will be able to follow seamlessly. I hope that Bright Side will follow that, but it's a longer book and will take a bit more time to edit.
A paper version of K&N Complete series (still) exists, but proofs are taking eons to come in the mail. I'll tell you when it's really ready to order.
A Hardback version of K&N exists. Once again, I haven't seen it, so don't order it yet.
Yours,
An author who misses her little miss