I’m so sorry Jolie hasn’t returned. Your ordeal with ID-ing a dead cat sounds traumatic. But you know it wasn’t her, the claws were not the same, nor were the paw colours. The kindest thing to do now for yourself is delete the pictures you keep going back to. Don’t torture yourself further with them. I’ll keep my fingers crossed that Jolie will still return home. It sounds like she had an amazing 13 years with you.

aww thank you ^_^

There’s a lady in my neighborhood whose cat ended up in my garage last year and I was able to return him through the same avenues I’m using now to find my cat, and he’d been missing for almost a week when he ended up at my house. She’s been really helpful in assisting the search, so here’s hoping. 

What makes things worse is that Jolie was the last relic I had of my dad before he died. He had rescued a pregnant cat in New Orleans that had been abandoned in the hurricane and Jolie was one of the kittens from that litter. I hadn’t even planned on adopting a kitten that day, but Jolie was constantly getting pushed around by her brothers and was such a ferocious scavenger for food that I had to have her. She kept clawing her way up his leg to get at his sandwich – something she never grew out of. Every time I’d eat she’d show up instantly to beg for food and wouldn’t leave me alone unless I gave her some scraps. 

It’s like losing a child. It’s especially confounding because I’ve had this cat for thirteen years and she’s never wandered far, always stayed within sight, always obediently comes to the door when called, or if she gets locked out when I don’t notice she’s slipped out into the yard, she’ll just wait patiently until someone opens the door. Every once in a while she’ll slip through a hole in the gate to go lay in the neighbor’s flower bed but it’s rare and she always comes back within minutes. Having her outright disappear is so out of character and alarming because it’s also doubtful someone picked her up since she’s a timid cat and I’m the only person she’ll let approach her. 

Going to the AAC yesterday to ID a dead cat that someone found in the area around the time she went missing was excruciating. I’m standing here instructing a couple of volunteers in gloves to manipulate this dead cat that’s been in a freezer for a day so I can look for tiny details that might confirm it’s her, and I was so clinical about it because I was trying so hard to keep it together that it made the whole ordeal especially morbid. I spent like a straight five minutes inspecting this dead cat’s feet – the face was so wrecked I wasn’t able to tell by facial markings or teeth – and thankfully the paw pads were the wrong color and the claws were an immediate giveaway since Jolie’s an older cat and they started growing in especially thick and gnarled. But it still psychs me out because I’m like, Was I just seeing what I wanted to see and there’s a chance it actually was her? And I keep looking at the photos sent to me by the person who originally found the body and it’s especially taxing because I can’t stop obsessively returning to pictures of this mangled dead fucking cat to try and reconfirm that it isn’t her. 

And then all I can think about is how the last time I saw her was when she kept rearranging herself in my lap and I was getting annoyed with her because she wouldn’t sit still and kept headbutting my hands while I was trying to write fucking fanfiction and I kept pushing her off of me. lmao! So yeah I’m super fucking wrecked.

Are there sheds or garages nearby that Jolie could have accidentally been locked in? Check under bushes too just in case she’s lying under one. I hope she returns home safely soon, keep us updated.

Yeah I’ve canvassed the area several times and every house in the neighborhood has a garage so it’s at the whims of someone responding on pawboost or the NextDoor app at this point. I also went to the animal shelter to ID a dead cat someone found in the area that fit her description but thankfully it wasn’t her 🙏😪