Yesterday around 1pm, Jenny asked me if I had seen Gumption. I figured, as was her nature that she had probably just gone up for her mid-day snooze under my bed. By 3pm, Jenny asked again after checking under my bed and not being able to see her. Therein started 4 hours of searching the house, backyard, neighbourhood frantically for the little one. It included “missing cat” signs posted throughout the hood, tears and a whole host of emotional labour.
In the peak of the chaos, I asked Virtute how he was doing. A little shaken, he replied, “I know that my namesake in that Weakerthans’ song sings about the fear of having to scrap with feral cats and survive cold winters with frost bitten ears, and I know she’s annoying, but I’m feeling a bit sick about the thought of her fending for herself.”
I asked if he was hungry (it was now dinner time), and he just said, “Not too hungry. I can’t really think about food when I feel like I’ve failed in my responsibility as a caregiver and protector for that little one.” It was hard for me to hear, I’d been thinking the same thing so I just said, “I think eating will do you some good.”
I cracked open a can of Virtute’s favourite meal “Rabbit Dinner” and scooped a likely too large scoop into his bowl, just to hear the trilling notes of Gumption’s wake up voice as she staggered out of Maggie’s room and into the kitchen for dinner.
Virtute, as shocked as me, simply said, “you made the sound that you found for her.”
diaries of a cat named virtute 