Logan

I had a beautiful relationship with a fiercely independent cat named Logan. I adopted him as a kitten and when I lived in an apartment, we cuddled and loved and were essentially inseparable. When I moved to a house and my rather irresponsible roommates left the front door open and he tasted outside - that was it. It was all he craved. In summer, he ripped the screens of the windows to get out. In winter, he hid and waited for someone to come home and then darted out between their legs. He was impossible.

Inside, he was a mopey, sad, depressive soul. Outside, he was a happy, free, pouncing spirit.
And so I let him out.

He disappeared once for 3 weeks. He had all his shots and he was microchipped. I hunted high and low for him and then one day the humane society called to say that they'd found him in the country chasing mice, 20 kilometers from where I lived. I took him home and locked him in. He howled, he cried, he sulked. Spring came and he ripped my screens. He struggled hard for his freedom. I struggled with my role in providing his safety versus my role in providing his happiness. I couldn't keep him caged. I let him out.

That spring he came and went (sometimes with live presents... eek!) and sometimes he smelled like a different house. As the summer progressed, I saw him less and less, but when I did, he was well fed and so happy.

And then one day, he stopped coming home at all.

I looked for him, I called to check on his microchip. nothing.

That winter, I followed kitty footprints from my house to a house in the neighbourhood. Maybe they were his. But what was I going to do? Knock on the door when he'd likely been going there for months? Take him home? Lock him up again? I couldn't do that.

I thought I had come to terms with it. Then one day at dinner with friends, someone asked me about him. I said that I was fairly sure that he was happy somewhere. He was a fierce creature that could take care of himself and he wasn't dead, they would have found his microchip and called me.

The someone said this, "Oh are you sure, cats get hit on roads and get run over so many times that they are squished like a pancake and they won't bother to find the microchip in that case."

I think I gaped so much that my food fell out of my mouth.

And my heart broke. And I questioned every decision I had made concerning Logan. And I doubted myself and I started looking for him again. And it became a bit of an obsession. And the guilt... oh, the guilt.

The boy of complex description assures me that my job was to love him, was to make the decisions I thought were best for him at the time. That I made the best ones I knew how and that they were so obviously made out of love.

And I know these things. I know that we don't get to control the things that happen. That when it comes to living beings with complicated minds of their own, you can't own them. You can only love them and do your best by them. And that life often doesn't give you closure in things like these. You've got to make your own sense out of them and let them go, no matter what the person across the table says to you.

In my mind, I know all these things.

In my heart, I'm not there yet.

"You know that regular people don't do things like that, right?" the boy of complex description informs me after i told him that i taught myself how to install ceiling lights from a book. "of course they COULD, but most people don't think they can. you know that, right?"

Maybe I knew that on some level. That most people likely don't teach themselves to crochet one stitch at a time by step by step pictures. Or turn off the main power and mess around with wires.

Maybe that makes me a nerd. But that's not going to stop me from doing a full bathroom renovation this long weekend... now where did i put that book???