suzie

I am so sad. I've lost my friend of 10 years. She has disappeared and I don't know where else to look for her. I've walked our neighborhod calling her name. "Soooo-zie! Suzie kitty, where are you? Here, kitty, kitty, kitty."

She's always been an indoor/outdoor kind of girl, but she never goes far and she never goes for long. Until now. I don't know where she is, and I hate not knowing. Something's wrong; she always sits on her brick pillar perch just ouside the front door waiting to catch my eye through the window. Or lounges on her diving board throne waiting for me to call her royal highness in for the night, while making up her mind whether or not she'll come. Until yesterday, when she wasn't there...not when I came home, not at dusk, not after dark, not at bedtime, not past bedtime, not during the night, not early this morning, not at lunch, not when I returned from work, not now. I don't know where she is, or how she is, and not knowing is killing me.

"Cut!"

Dry those tears and fast-forward to today, Sunday. This morning, just as the moon and sun were changing shifts, she reappeared- dirty, pitifully skinny, and exhausted. Too tired to meow as she hobbled through the door, she hasn't yet told me where she'd been since Thursday, and I feel sure that's a mystery I'll never uncover. But now, a bucket of tears later, she's back, and the not knowing is immaterial.

Let me introduce you to our recent MIA, Suzie. Before Buster, back when the girls were begging, pleading, cajoling, wheedling, promising anything for a dog- doing their chores for a year without being told, doing each other's chores, doing our chores- my sweet husband developed the misguided notion that a cat would

1. be an acceptable substitute for a dog and
2. I don't know...what? be less trouble than a dog?

Wrong on both counts, Johnny-boy, but daddy points for trying. Anyway, quicker than you can say, "Oh my gosh, is that a fur ball or a lung she just hacked up?" we found ourselves the dubious owners of one very large, very big-eyed, very jumpy tomcat named Suzie. At least someone thought it was a tomcat. Turns out, he was a she. (Maybe the name should have been a clue when someone got her from a woman who got her from some guy who, before moving away and abandoning her, named her Suzie, which in my opinion is a sucky name for a cat, but anyway...) Suzie was a big, beautiful, full-figured woman. And like any woman, she wanted only to be admired continuously, handled infrequently, and fed repeatedly. As far as the girls were concerned she had just one flaw, as it turns out a major one...she was not a dog. Inevitably, Suzie, the cat, became mine.

I'm not really a cat person, but have gained a grudging appreciation for certain aspects of "catness" over these years. I often find myself mesmerized with her endless variety of poses which, while totally unaffected, look as if they were practiced for weeks to convey maximum charm. I love the fact that she appears so cooly detached, but does so while remaining within eye and earshot of her humans. I like the way she keeps me company when I pull weeds or clean the pool, which is something my own offspring never did. I admire her spunk. Suzie suffers no fools, and has been observed bitch slapping many a hapless cat that wandered into her yard, this despite being declawed before we got her. She even manhandles Buster when he gets cocky, but that's not saying much...how intimidating is a dog that wears a "Stud Muffin" sweater when he goes for a walk on "coolish" days, and has to be physically forced outside to do his business in a light sprinkle. Suzie, on the other hand, has braved some of the nastiest weather Oklahoma can produce, and Oklahoma produces a good deal of it.

In fact, apart from the fact that she's hairy, adores rolling in red dirt (something else Oklahoma produces a lot of,) prefers sleeping on duvets (upon which she deposits a hefty sampling of both the aforementioned,) purposely bypasses tile in order to barf on carpet, has that annoying little UTI requiring "special" high dollar cat food, and disappears for 3 days causing me to cry so much imagining her locked in some dark, airtight hellhole wondering why I wasn't coming to her rescue that my eyelids swelled so much I looked like Ron Perlman in that "Beauty and the Beast" TV show from the 80's and couldn't go to church and sing in the choir, she's really a terrific cat as far as cats go, which for some people with allergies is not near far enough.

Anyway, she's back. Back in the dirt, back on the bed, back in the house, back from the dead!

Back.