Zuzu

I have been feeding a cat where I work for four years or so. I named her Zuzu after Jimmy Stuart's little girl in It's A Wonderful Life, because I started feeding her around the holidays. She was solid black with greenish/yellowish eyes. She was not a people cat at first and wouldn't let me pet her. I took her to the vet and got her spayed and he gave her shots. So after four years of seeing each other once a day, almost every day, we'd gotten to be pretty good friends. Sometimes she didn't even seem to want to eat whenever I'd go outside and call her. She just wanted me to pet her and talk to her, which I loved doing. It was such a nice break from work problems and people to be able to hang out with her for 10 minutes or so. I always arranged for other people to feed her if I went out of town. I always worried about her when it got really cold, or if there were bad thunderstorms. But she seemed to be a survivor - battling all of these things, along with neighborhood dogs and bigger male cats, in her quiet sweet way.

A week ago last Wednesday was the last time I've seen her. It's not like her to dissappear for a few days at a time. I think once before, I didn't see her for 4 or 5 days. But for about the past year she's been around between 9 and 10 in the morning, every day. I drove the neighborhood calling for her over the first weekend. The next Monday, I called the animal shelter. They had a black female with green eyes, so I held my breath and drove over, only to be unbelievably saddened when it wasn't her. She seems to have just disappeared. Everyone is telling me that cats are like that, one day they'll just decide to let someone else feed them for awhile. I'm trying really hard to hope that she's fine, and that she's being well taken care of with food and water during this so far brutal summer. But I really, really miss her and wish she'd come back. My work day isn't the same without her sweet little face.