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.
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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