#oneaday Day 750: Cooling and cat-proofing

The heat wave we've been suffering all week appears to have broken; outside is a relatively normal-feeling temperature right now, the humidity is down to levels where it's actually possible to breathe, and the sky has taken on a typically British summertime partially overcast look. It's really quite pleasant; if it could just stay like this, that would be absolutely lovely.

The view through the patio doors as I type this.

Andie has been spending some time putting up window screens, which will have the dual purpose of "cat-proofing" the windows and allowing us to cool the house down somewhat by actually having the windows open. Obviously we are not keen for any sort of repeat of the last three weeks, so we are hoping that this particular solution — some seemingly well-crafted screens for the windows, attached to the frames via Velcro — will prove adequate. Oliver has not yet attempted to escape through one of the open windows and the house is significantly cooler than it has been for the past few days, so it's looking like we might be on to a winner.

Of course, we're still both extremely worried that he will somehow find his way out again, particularly if he succeeds in figuring out how to remove the window screens — if, indeed, he figures out that is a thing that is possible. Thus far he has shown no interest in wanting to move or scratch them — indeed, both cats have mostly just seemed appreciative that they can enjoy a bit of fresh air coming into the house, particularly now that there is a bit of a breeze coming in from outside, rather than the oppressively still and humid air of the last few days.

It is good to be able to leave the air-conditioned bedroom and enjoy a relatively normal existence in the rest of the house. Today I have mostly been playing the new Star Fox, which you can read more about over on MoeGamer. It's also actually our wedding anniversary today, but we never make a particularly big deal out of that. We are grateful to our respective parents for their generous financial gifts, however; those are going a significant way towards us being able to have another holiday in September as a "do-over" of the one we just had — and hopefully this time without the anxiety of a missing little ginger twat.

Oliver himself appears to have pretty much made a full recovery. He is behaving just like he used to — right down to showing an unhealthy interest in batting my Senran Kagura collection off the shelves in the living room — and is jumping up to his favourite high places, including the top shelf in the catio and the top of our media cabinet. He hasn't yet been back up to the very top of his cat tree, however; he's been most of the way up, but not all of the way up. We think he's dealing with a combination of still being a bit weak in his back legs (something the vet mentioned) and potentially still having a bit of trauma over being stuck up an actual tree, and thus perhaps not wanting to climb too high. His back legs are a lot stronger than they were already, however; he's been jumping up onto things without issue, and playing with things like the silly little deeply, deeply loved kitten he is.

Patti has also mostly adjusted to Oliver's return. She is still hissing at him a bit if he gets too close, but one gets the impression her heart really isn't in it. Earlier today, Oliver went right up to her and rubbed his face on her, and she hissed quietly, but didn't attack him and didn't actually appear to be all that bothered. I think she just feels obliged to appear mad at him, because she absolutely definitely won't admit that she was missing him and pining for him while he was absent.

Anyway, all in all, it has been a pleasant Saturday, and in the knowledge that some of the most difficult, time-consuming and challenging projects at work are now pretty much done, I actually feel like I can properly relax for the first time in quite a while! I recommend it.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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#oneaday Day 746: Decompression

I know I said I'd write about something else on here, but after the late-night update on the situation, I feel inclined to bring this little saga to something of a "close" in a more conclusive manner. We are exhausted and emotional, but delighted beyond belief to have our precious Oliver back at home with us. There will be images of him peppered throughout this post.

It's hard to believe that this whole saga is over — and over in a way that is about the best possible way it could have resolved itself, outside of him coming home a little bit earlier. We took him to the vet today to get checked over, and outside of him having lost a bit of weight and muscle definition on his legs — unsurprising given his three weeks living rough — he has been given a completely clean bill of health. This is our last remaining worry put to rest: he is back, he is alive, he is safe, and he is healthy. Evidently he was a very lucky boy — and a clever boy for taking care of himself for so long; things could have been much worse, and I am grateful to anything that will listen that things did not end up that way.

Patti has not yet adjusted to his presence. She was very clearly missing him, because we caught her looking for him, she was acting incredibly clingy and occasionally letting out the most heartbreaking plaintive howls of an evening. But as soon as he came back, she was puffing up, growling and hissing, and she's spent all of today in the wardrobe. The wardrobe is a safe place. She is fine in there, she's just not quite ready to come out again yet. But she will get there.

As for Oliver himself, he is doing just fine. He's clearly very tired by his whole ordeal — and who can blame him? — but he's already settling back into his usual routines and behaviour. The one and only thing that has really changed about the way he behaves is that he is a lot more vocal now than he was before he escaped; he is spending a lot of time shouting at us, which is probably an aftereffect of him calling for us up the tree last night. He wants to know that we are nearby, and that he is safe.

The one thing we'll probably never know is where he went for most of those three weeks. Given that we found him a couple of hundred yards down the road, he probably didn't go all that far, but aside from him being stuck up a tree last night, we have no insight as to where he might have been. Was he locked in somewhere? Quite possibly. Was he taken in by somebody? Probably not, as otherwise he'd probably be a bit more well-fed than he is now. Did he just get lost? Entirely possible, as he's never been outside in this neighbourhood before, and thus even though we left him plenty of familiar scents outside, he was unable to find his way home by himself, even though he was so close. So very close.

The hardest thing about the whole situation was contemplating the possibility that we might never see him again. There are things everywhere in the house that remind us of him. There's some cat plushies on the shelves in the living room: a black one and a ginger one, for Patti and him. There's a little stained glass thing depicting a black cat and a ginger cat hanging out together on the shed. The wallpaper on my living room PC was Oliver. The avatar I used on Facebook and Nextdoor was Oliver. Days before he went away, I set my blog to automatically set a "Featured Image" on every single post that didn't already have one, and for the image in question to be one that showed Oliver and Patti napping together. I couldn't even contemplate booting up Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream for Switch, because I made anthropomorphised versions of Oliver and Patti in that game, and playing it while we didn't even know if Oliver was still alive or not would have absolutely broken my heart even more than it was already.

For me, one of the worst parts of dealing with some sort of loss is seeing all the remnants that are left behind, and deciding what you are going to do with them. Just little things that remind you of who or what you have lost; sometimes even the simplest, silliest little thing can bring you to tears. Back during a particularly bleak period in my life circa 2010 — the time I split from my first wife and was faced with essentially having to completely "reset" my post-graduate life and start over — I described these things as "crystallised memories", and it's a description I stand by. There they sit: a solid, tangible reminder of something that was once in your life and now is not. It can be difficult to let go of them, but sometimes that is the healthiest thing to do.

Thankfully, none of that was necessary this time around. And while there most certainly was a great deal of grief while Oliver was away from home, we can now thankfully set that grief aside and appreciate how lucky we are to have someone we love so much and that we feared we'd lost forever return to our lives, safe and well. Sometimes amazing things really do happen, seemingly against all odds.

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#oneaday Day 745b: Oliver's return, the kindness of strangers, and the unkindness of the people you might need in a crisis

Hello. Second entry for today (although technically it's tomorrow now, as it's 1:21am as I type this) but this is big, important news: OLIVER HAS RETURNED!

Oh my God. I am an emotional wreck, and so is Andie, but our brave little boy managed to survive for three weeks out in the wilds of Lordswood, and we found him this evening thanks to a tip from a kind neighbour on Nextdoor. I had a feeling that either Facebook or Nextdoor, for all those platforms' many, many faults, would be the main way in which we tracked down our precious boy — but it certainly didn't hurt to advertise him on all manner of different services, even if it cost money to do so in some cases.

Our neighbour, Sam, reported that they had seen a ginger cat on his security cameras recently, and that they'd also been hearing a cat crying from the property over the road from them for a little while. We went out to go and check the area on the offchance that we would find at least a clue — and we heard a yowling from up in the tree. I knew immediately that it was Oliver. Oliver has never been a particularly vocal cat except under quite specific circumstances — usually rolling on the patio in the sunshine — but I recognised his voice straight away, and as soon as I saw him up there, I knew.

We couldn't work out how to get to him, though. The tree he was up was on private property — a children's home, I believe? — and initially we couldn't work out how to get in touch with them. When we did manage to run into a staff member leaving the property, they basically said they couldn't (or wouldn't) help us and said we'd have to wait until the morning, even though we made it clear Oliver has been missing for three weeks, and this was the first time we'd seen him.

So from there we tried to work out what to do next. Do you actually call the fire brigade when a cat is stuck up a tree? Apparently Hampshire Fire Service has a specialised animal rescue unit, but they are somewhere not in Southampton, and they weren't answering their phones. I called 101 and asked the police what we should do, and they said to phone the fire brigade. I phoned the fire brigade and they said that no, they don't do that, it's an urban legend.

So then what? I tried the 24-hour RSPCA hotline for animal welfare, but it turns out that it is not, in fact, a 24-hour service. I tried calling a local tree surgeon who had a 24-hour hotline for animal rescues, but again, it turns out that it is not, in fact, a 24-hour service either. Seemingly no-one was willing to help, at all. No-one that you would think to try calling in a situation like this was going to help us. Panic started to set in.

On the off-chance, I posted an update on both Facebook and Nextdoor that we had found Oliver, but we needed help. I honestly wasn't expecting anyone to come — but three very kind people showed up at various points, all very kind, considerate and understanding of our situation and our emotional state. Eventually a chap who was clearly some sort of tradesman in possession of an absolutely massive ladder — and who had clearly done this many times before — showed up, shot up his ladder and was back down with our precious boy in less than five minutes. Amazing.

Anyway. Fuck me, that was an awful three weeks. On the plus side, I can get back to writing about other things on here now, which I'm sure you'll all be delighted to hear. Thank you all for your patience — and for the kind words you have had to share during this absolutely, mindblowingly traumatic three weeks! I'm just glad it all ended well — though we're taking Oliver to the vet for a checkup tomorrow just in case.

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#oneaday Day 744: Trying to maintain hope

I am trying so hard to hang onto hope that we will find Oliver, or that he will just wander back in one day as if nothing happened, but with him being gone for three weeks from today, it is getting tougher and tougher to maintain that hope — and it's all the harder seeing other people on platforms like Facebook who have been going through the same thing ending up getting safely reunited with their beloved pets. I don't like feeling jealousy about such things, but I can't deny I have felt that way to a certain extent. I have done all the same things they have; why hasn't it brought our boy home yet?

That's not to say we're giving up on him — we had a single possible but completely unconfirmed sighting of a cat that may or may not have been him in the woods some distance from our house (but within a plausible radius of where he might have roamed over the course of three weeks) and thus have spent several sessions combing that section of woods at various times of day to no avail; I went yesterday afternoon after we got the comment; we got up early and went at dawn this morning; and I walked all the way from our house to this part of the woods this evening. There was no sign of him at any point.

I don't even know if we're looking in the right place. There are so many potential places he could have gone. The thing with the area we live in, known as Lordswood, is that there's a fucking great wood covering a lot of it, and thus if he found his way into there, which is entirely possible, heaven only knows how we're ever going to track him down and bring him home.

The one thing I am trying to tell myself is that when I make an excursion like this evening, I am hopefully leaving some sort of scent trail that might help him to find his way home. Lord knows I was sweating enough to leave a stink trail by the time I finished my wanderings this evening, but who knows if that's enough? I certainly don't, because as I've said, we've seen absolutely no sign of him anywhere for the last three weeks, meaning we have no idea if we're looking in even the right direction. That said, given how we believe he escaped and the fact he did not appear on the cameras mounted on the front of our house when he did so, we have an instinctive feeling as to which way he went, but no actual proof.

I haven't ruled out the possibility that he has been taken in by someone, either. And if that has happened, I have no idea how we'll find him, because if the people who take him in never take him to the vet or a shelter or get his microchip scanned by a volunteer, he won't get flagged up as his home being here, and the fact he is away from a family who love and miss him very much. If this is what has happened, I just hope that they will do the decent thing.

If that is not what has happened, I am at something of a loss as to what else I can do at this point.

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#oneaday Day 740: Exhaustion

I am absolutely exhausted. We stayed up late last night to go on another night-time look for Oliver, and once again found absolutely no sign of him whatsoever. At this point I really am at a loss as to what I can possibly do. I bought bright head-mounted torches and an infra-red heat-sensing camera in the hopes that they will make it easier to see a cat hiding, but given that we have no idea which way he went or how far he's gone in the last two and a half weeks, it feels very much like finding a needle in a haystack, and the emotional exhaustion of simply not knowing if anything we are doing is actually worthwhile is very much manifesting itself as physical exhaustion.

person in black shirt lying on a white sofa — Photo by www.kaboompics.com on Pexels.com

This is one of those times where I feel like I need to have a word with my inner self, and say that it's okay to look after me. Oliver is important, and we desperately want to find him, but if the process of searching for him, worrying about him and generally running ourselves completely ragged is having an impact on our physical wellbeing, it's probably time to take a little break, at least for one evening. Patti is also sad, upset and clearly worried about us.

We have done everything that the people who copy-paste the exact same comments onto every single "missing pet" Facebook post suggest. We have put things that he likes and things that smell of him outside, we have put food outside (which, on separate occasions, got eaten by another neighbourhood cat, and attracted a fox), we have left open the window that we believe he escaped through, we have been out calling softly for him, we have sat out in the garden having a normal conversation so he can hear us, we have motion sensors on our security cameras set to notify us the moment they see an animal.

At this point my only real possible conclusions are that he is locked in somewhere and hasn't been found yet — which, with every passing day, makes me very concerned for his wellbeing; that he has been taken by someone, either because they saw a lovely cat looking lost and thought they'd take care of it, or because of more nefarious purposes, which I don't like to think about (but also feel is probably quite unlikely); or that he is no longer with us, in which case I feel like he probably would have been found by now.

I know I keep repeating myself, but hopefully my post yesterday makes it clear why. I do not feel like I can "continue" with my life while I don't know what has happened to my precious boy. And I'm worried that I am going to be left feeling like this for a long time. What if we just… don't hear anything at all? What then? Are we stuck in a perpetual limbo of hoping that he'll just make it home somehow, seemingly against all odds? Or do we attempt to make our peace with the situation, try and say as best a goodbye as we can in his absence, and try to move on?

I can't bring myself to do the last one. Not yet, anyway. I still feel like one evening, we're just going to see him saunter around the corner as if nothing happened. It does sometimes end up like this, and I am hoping that this is one of those situations. But with every passing day, it's harder to hold on to that hope.

I'm off to try and distract myself. Tonight I will be having a go at Adventure of Samsara, Atari's exploratory platformer that apparently has some connections to the 2600 version of Adventure. Hopefully it takes my mind off things for a bit at least.

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#oneaday Day 737: Returning to reality

We go home tomorrow, which is going to be somewhat bittersweet, as I'm sure you can imagine. There has been absolutely no sign of Oliver over the course of the last week, no contact from anyone who has seen him, no sightings reported on social media and — perhaps thankfully? — no reports that he has passed away. So I choose to believe that he is still out there, somewhere, just waiting for us to find him. Perhaps it's all a game to him. He does love a game.

grayscale photography of concrete road during daytime — Photo by Airam Vargas on Pexels.com

I am, of course, still absolutely sick with worry. It has been two weeks today that he went missing, and whatever happens, I am always, always going to be wondering if there was more we could have done — more we should have done. There are zillions of online resources out there saying what you "should" do when a cat goes missing, but a significant proportion of them appear to be AI-generated drivel and pseudoscience.

I am not willing to give up on him, though. At this point, it feels like it will be unlikely that he will come home by himself for whatever reason, but I still want to go looking for him and will be doing so when we return home tomorrow. I don't know if I will be able to achieve anything — over the course of two weeks, it's entirely possible he could have gone a long way, although most supposed "experts" (with the caveat above) seem to believe that cats who spend the majority of their time indoors, as Oliver did, won't have actually ventured very far, and are probably hiding silently somewhere they feel is "safe". This, unfortunately, makes them extremely difficult to track down; the most supposedly reliable advice appears to be to bring things that are "familiar" to them — things that they recognise the smell or sound of.

Part of me is concerned that he has simply been taken by someone. Not necessarily stolen as such, but perhaps he was seen somewhere, the owner didn't think to get his microchip checked, and now thinks that they have a wonderful new cat in their family. If that has happened, I have absolutely no idea how we would go about finding him — although if this has happened, his status will be flagged up if and when he is taken to the vets or a shelter or something, and that, in turn, would allow us to be reunited. But that, of course, depends on the person in question thinking to take him to a vet or shelter — if indeed this is the situation in which he has found himself.

As I've said repeatedly over the course of the last two weeks, though, the absolutely impossible thing throughout all this is just not knowing anything. What made him jump out of the window? Which way did he go? Was he just exploring, or was he running from something? Is he hurt? Is he hungry? Has he been taking care of himself for the last two weeks? Has someone else been taking care of him for the last two weeks? I don't have any answers, and these myriad questions swirling around my brain are driving me absolutely spare.

I'm supposed to be going back to work on Tuesday, and it'll be right back into a difficult, stressful time, too. Honestly I'm not sure I'm going to be able to cope. I am wracked with pain, sadness, guilt, anger, frustration and all manner of other emotions, and I still don't really know how to process any of them, or how to direct any of them in a vaguely productive direction — either for getting some work done, or for tracking down our precious boy.

As with any difficult time, I guess it's just going to have to be a "one step at a time" sort of situation. I want to think this is all going to end happily and become a funny story to share in the years to come, but I am also fearing the worst. I don't want to lose him. He is so, so precious to me.

There is nothing I can do from where I am right now, though. Tomorrow is a new day, and we can decide what we need to do from there. So the best thing I can probably do at the moment is get some rest and try to come to tomorrow as alert and refreshed as is possible under the circumstances.

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#oneaday Day 733: Distractions

Today we went to the swimming pool, the central attraction of most Center Parcs sites. We had a good time having a little swim in the nice warm outdoor "Sprudel pool" and sitting stewing in the outdoor jacuzzi for a bit. For the rest of the day, we've been trying to relax as best we can: eating good food, watching the wildlife out of the window, and in my case, finally getting around to replaying Ace Attorney: Trials & Tribulations in its Nintendo Switch incarnation. The last time I played this, it was on DS, so it's nice to play it on the big screen.

Pic, again, unrelated, but I thought you might like to see a deer.

The distractions have been good and welcome, but it's still tough, I don't think either of us will deny that. But we are at least managing to have a reasonably good time while we're away, which is the important thing. In some respects it might even be a good thing that we don't hear anything while we're away, as it means that the worst hasn't happened — or if it has, no-one has found him as yet. That means, I like to think, that he's still out there somewhere, waiting to be found — or perhaps just waiting to wander his way back one day and saunter in as if nothing had happened.

Stranger things have happened, as I've said a few times before; cats are well-known for their independence, after all, and even my beloved family pet from when I was a child disappeared for six whole weeks once, apparently. I don't remember this at all; I guess I must have been too young to remember when it happened. I do remember the time she got hit by a car and fled into a bush in a nearby field; we managed to track her down, get her to the vet, and she eventually made a full recovery, going on to live a very long, full and happy 17 years of life.

But still. As I keep saying, it almost doesn't bear thinking about right now, as far away from the situation as we are in physical terms. And I think we are slowly coming to terms with various unfortunate truths… or at least possibilities. None of them are particularly nice possibilities to contemplate, and thinking about them too much still upsets the both of us… but we are, gradually, bit by bit, able to get through each day without becoming completely non-functional.

It remains to be seen how we'll be when we get back, of course, depending on what — if anything — has transpired in the meantime. I feel like the best case scenario at this point is that he's found wandering around somewhere, taken to a vet, gets his microchipped scanned (which will immediately flag him both as missing and as living with us) and will thus be able to return to us safe and sound. But that is, I am aware, a very optimistic hope for how this will all end up.

I guess there's no point wondering "what if". The human brain doesn't work that way, however; the human brain, it seems, is uniquely designed to wonder "what if" as much as possible, as often as possible. And it's a function that, at least in my brain, it's near-impossible to turn off.

Still. It's the end of another day and, as always, we continue. Tomorrow is yet another day, and it remains to be seen what it will bring.

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#oneaday Day 731: Temporary escape

Well, we did what we said we were going to do: we got away from it all. Part of me still wants to be at home waiting with open arms for Oliver to return, but it's been a week. At this point I don't know if he's more or less likely to make it home by himself after this long; apparently typically "indoor" cats tend to return home after about 5-7 days away if they go walkabout like this, but we have something of a suspicion that Oliver, from a previous life (i.e. before he moved in with us) has some memories of Being Outside, hence his apparent eagerness to go wandering off.

Regardless, we are some distance away from, practically speaking, being able to do anything about his disappearance right now, so all we can do is attempt to enjoy ourselves. We are safely ensconced in our villa, the weather is nice, and this is the view out of the back door:

Green. Green everywhere. It is nice. I feel a certain affinity for foresty settings. I have always liked coming to Center Parcs precisely because they're all slap bang in the middle of a forest, and when I was a youngster, I always used to like trips to Waresley Wood, a nearby small woods that also, as I recall, played host to a sewage works, which was nice. You could tell which way you were going from the smell in certain areas.

I always feel somewhat mixed feelings about being out in nature. I certainly, on the whole, enjoy the experience of being in natural surroundings, and find the general environment to be rather relaxing. At the same time, though, I am always very conscious of the number of things that live in Nature that are more than willing to sting me, bite me or just generally make me very itchy. And these things are not always immediately apparent — though I do tend to tread specifically carefully when I'm in an unfamiliar and somewhat "untamed" environment; memories of enduring the irritation of a brush with some stinging nettles as a kid remain surprisingly vibrant, and I'm not keen to repeat them as a grown adult.

I am hoping the time away will help us. We have been so worried for the last week that it's just completely exhausted the pair of us. As I type this, Andie has just climbed into bed and gone to sleep. It is not even 6.30pm, but I do not blame her one bit. We have been fretting so much over our silly little man, and both of us are still worrying over him, even though we've both agreed that to just go ahead with our time away is the best possible thing we can do with regard to our own self-care.

And like I've said before: Andie's mum is looking after our house and Patti while we are away, so if Oliver does happen to show his face — or if we hear from someone who has seen him — she can take any sort of action that might be needed. Hopefully, that action will just be "shut the little bugger in and seal up all the windows for the rest of eternity" but… well, as I've said numerous times over the last week, we just don't know.

Anyway, I am going to make a specific effort to try and enjoy my holiday now. We miss you, Oliver, and we would love it if we would be able to come home to your smiling face on our return next week. For now, please be safe, take care of yourself… and go make a lot of noise at a sympathetic-looking person who will help you be reunited with us.

We have no particular plans for the rest of the day. I'm off to see if Andie actually wants to wake up at all today, or if we might as well start our holiday properly from tomorrow!

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#oneaday Day 730: Having to draw a line

I have posted more than 30 more flyers about Oliver today. Andie's mum went out calling for him last night. We have put out adverts on social media, informed the microchip company, informed our local vets, informed local cat charities. We have spent several nights staying up waiting, placing stinky pants, litter trays, favourite food and treats outside. We have wandered around the neighbourhood in multiple directions shaking treats and calling for him. At this point I think we have no other option than to draw a line and say that we have done everything we possibly can do for the little bugger, and the only thing really left is just… to wait.

yellow line between feet — Photo by Oleh Budurov on Pexels.com

It's not giving up. It's an acknowledgement that we have made an effort to try and find him, and thus far those efforts have been unsuccessful. This could mean any of a number of things: that he's no longer with us; that he doesn't want to be found; that he's gone far enough afield that we haven't been able to run into him as yet; that he's lost and doesn't know how to find his way home; that he's ended up locked in somewhere he shouldn't be; or that someone has taken him in, perhaps even thinking "ooh, I always wanted a cat, I'll keep this one".

Since we don't know the exact reason we have been unsuccessful as yet, it seems like the most sensible thing to do is just to wait and see if any of the seeds we have planted — by which I mean the social media posts, the leaflets, the informing of various local organisations — will bear fruit. This may end in tragedy — I hope it won't, but it might — or it may end in joyous reunion (and a very, very grounded cat). At this point, we just don't know, and as I've said numerous times over the course of the last week, that is one of the most difficult things about the entire situation.

Because we don't know what has happened, we're left in a strange sort of emotional limbo, where all the things we want to feel are both correct and incorrect at the same time. For me, the things that I am holding onto the most are 1) that he hasn't been found, having been hit by a car, on the side of the road somewhere, and thus is hopefully still out there somewhere, and that 2) there are many, many stories of cats who go missing for weeks at a time, who then subsequently come home safe and sound. Apparently my childhood cat, Penny, disappeared for six full weeks at one point, because she had "moved in" with another family. My only concern about this latter potential situation is how to find him if this has happened, and if the people he is with are honest enough to get his microchip scanned and return him to us.

But here, at nearly 7pm on Sunday night, the day before we're going away on holiday, I think I have to draw a line and say "that's everything I can do… for now". Andie's mum is holding the fort while we are away, so if he does turn up he will have a welcoming face ready to spoil him rotten, and if he still hasn't shown up by the time we return, we can continue our efforts to search for him then.

As I say, it's not giving up. It's giving ourselves permission to take a step away from what has been a horrible, stressful week, and to give ourselves some very much needed self-care. I sincerely hope this story has a happy ending, but for now, I guess it is on a hiatus of sorts.

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#oneaday Day 727: The longest days

In the grand scheme of things, it has only been a few days since Oliver went missing, but it feels like an absolute eternity. I am still refusing to give up on him — in fact, after I type this, I'm going to go out for a bit again — but it is getting very difficult to know what to do. Should I stay around the local area, given that we have seen absolutely no sign of him? Or should we spread our search a little further afield? There's a sports centre nearby that probably has lots of bushes a cat could hide in, so I think I might wander up in that direction this evening. In the absence of any sort of clues whatsoever, I can't think of anything else to do, other than to just go around the same area we've covered for the last few nights.

Apparently mostly indoor cats are inclined to head for home after around 5-7 days of being away, and indeed in the various Facebook and Nextdoor groups I've been dropping into over the course of the last few days, there are a lot of reports of cats that just turned up again after roughly this long — a lot more reports in that regard than those that remained missing for longer, or which… I don't even want to say it, even though I know it is a distinct possibility, especially the longer he is absent.

I guess the one thing I can vaguely take heart from is that because Oliver is microchipped (as is the law now, I believe), if he was to be found, we would have heard something. And we have not heard anything, which means that he is still out there somewhere. What state he's in, I have no idea, but he is still out there somewhere. And I just have to try and cling on to that for now.

Every time Patti looks out of the window, I am hoping that I'll just see his cheeky face looking back up at us, as if to say "what?" Every time our cameras report that there is movement outside, I hope that I'll see him sauntering around the corner as if nothing had happened. Every noise I hear outside, I hope I'll see his little golden eyes shining back at me.

I guess we just have to keep looking, keep hoping and keep waiting. Andie's mum is coming down on Saturday to help us keep looking if we haven't already been able to find him (or if he hasn't already found us). She was coming down anyway to look after the cats while we go away, so we are just going to try and enjoy our holiday as best we can under the circumstances, since it is too late for us to cancel and get a refund, otherwise we would have done that. That means someone is here while we are away, and will be able to keep an eye out for him, be here if he suddenly decides or manages to come home, and be able to go pick him up or whatever is needed if someone finds him and calls him in.

My heart is broken and my mood is pitch black. I don't know what to do. No-one prepares you for something like this, because there is no way you can prepare someone for something like this. All I can really do is refuse to give up completely. Our little man must have some street smarts; our little man must be able to find his way home. He must. He must.

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