This week I took the step of trying to locate Diego by talking to Suzan, a wonderful pet communicator I’ve used before. Before the phone conversation, you’re asked to send a photo. I found this one of Diego and his beautiful big feet, and attached it to an email to her. Even as I was doing it, I noticed that I had titled this older photo DiegoFree. It hit me in the heart with a sort of recognition.
Sure enough, when I talked to Suzan, she told me she was fairly certain Diego had “left this body.” I asked how and why, and she said she could not be certain, but that it was “probably not constructive” to try and divine what his fate had been. I took that to mean she got the sense he died violently, but didn’t want to traumatize me further.
I had hoped that if I heard this, I could let him go and stop feeling the need to look for him. It was not to be so. Every day since I have gone to the spot where I fed him, and called his name. But the area feels empty, lonely, and, with the raccoon bodies still visible in the bushes nearby, scary. The cover story of the local paper this week was about mountain lion sightings on the coast. In the four years I’ve been doing this work, I’ve never been afraid until now.
The time since my conversation with Suzan has been a blur of sudden tears and just as sudden collection of myself. You know the risk these kitties run every day, I tell myself. It’s your choice to get attached, knowing full well they could be gone tomorrow. Just keep loving them today. But it’s far easier said than done. I reproach myself hourly for not having been able to pull the trigger and bring Diego home where he could be socialized, in preparation for finding him an indoor home, free of the dangers that may have killed him.
I tell myself I just didn’t have the space, my hands were so full, but I am not convincing myself.
There was also a sudden blessing in the reappearance of two kitties I’d been feeding at the other location, who had also scattered to the winds in the last week. So life begins to return to normal – just not with Diego. But I’m not ready to give him up. I’m still putting out food every day, thinking he might just return. By the time I realize he won’t be, I’m hoping that I’ll be ready to let him go.