I want my three-day weekend back. And specifically, I wish I could undo the last day and a half of it. It was bad enough that I was flu-y all weekend long, which (combined with my staying up until daybreak on Friday night, for reasons known only to God) would have wiped out most of the weekend. But worse, far worse, was the disappearance of our big kitty, Jasper, on Sunday evening.

I hasten to add that he’s back, and okay; if he weren’t, I’d be out looking for him instead of posting this. He was gone for less than 24 hours, as it turned out. But what a hellish 20 hours it was. And he refuses to tell me what happened. All I know is that he failed to return from a perfectly routine last trip outside on Sunday evening. Jasper is the only cat of the three who gets to go outside, and he’s earned that privilege by being totally trustworthy. He’s usually content to just lie on the deck, or to bound across the yard when Bill is out there playing frisbee with the dogs. So we’ve even gotten fairly relaxed about letting him out after dark; I’ve set an arbitrary curfew of 7 p.m. on weeknights (which gives him half an hour to an hour outdoors, depending on when I get home), but on weekends, things are looser. We usually keep track of him when he’s outside, though, so that on the occasions when he walks around to the front of the house, which he’s not allowed to do, we catch him, bring him inside, and scold him—and keep him inside for a while.

As I’ve mentioned, Jasper had a hard life before the Siamese Rescue people found him. You’d think he’d be happy to be a pampered indoor cat after all he’s been through, but nothing makes him happier than lazing outdoors in the sun. He doesn’t hunt; he’ll occasionally eye an insect or small critter moving through the grass, but he’d rather nap than get up and chase anything. And watching him basking on the deck on a sunny day, his face an absolute picture of bliss, has been enough to make me ignore my general objections to letting cats go outside; he’s just so damn happy out there.

I don’t know what happened on Sunday night, what prompted him to go wandering. All I know is that when I woke up from a nap and went to bring him inside, he wasn’t there, and he didn’t respond to my calling him, as he usually does. Lately he’s been a little slower to respond sometimes, but if I call him from the back door, then check to see if he’s in front, he’s usually at the back door on my second trip there. Not Sunday night, though. We called for him, and we both walked all the way around the house looking for him. No sign of him. I decided to give him a little while to come home, but when I checked again half an hour later, he still wasn’t there. It was time to start a full-scale search. We each walked up and down the street and over to adjacent streets, with panic starting to set in. Still no Jasper.

I’ve never experienced this before, and I’m not sure there’s a worse feeling in the world. Okay, there are plenty of worse feelings, I know. But the not knowing was just unbearable. We couldn’t find him anywhere, and yet I knew he couldn’t have gone far. I was sure, sure in my bones, that he was hurt or worse; I knew that if he could have come home, he would have. And as I was sitting at the computer printing out “lost cat” flyers, I had that “I can’t believe this is happening” feeling that makes everything even worse. On Sunday night, I couldn’t quite bring myself to really go to bed, because doing so would have felt like giving up. So I dozed briefly while Bill was still awake, then caught a couple of hours’ restless sleep, still in my clothes, between 4:00 and 6:00 a.m. on Monday morning. I tried to convince myself that Jasper was just stuck in someone’s garage, and that he would come home as soon as people started leaving for work on Monday morning…unless they had the day off, as I did. I convinced myself sufficiently that I half-expected to see his sweet face at the door, and I was crushed when he wasn’t there. More uncontrollable weeping and a growing sense of panic took over, though I pulled myself together long enough to distribute flyers at every house on our block and the one to the north.

After I came home to print more flyers, I gave in to my flu symptoms and lay down for a nap before tackling the next block, leaving the blinds open so I could keep an eye out for glimpses of a tail or paw or kitty face appearing on the deck. (The bedroom only has a partial view of the deck; I wasn’t actually expecting individual cat parts to appear.) Maisy, who could tell something was wrong (both she and Liam were noticeably affected by Jasper’s disappearance), curled up on the backs of my legs, and I slept for a good hour and a half. When I woke up, I saw what might just have been a Siamese cat flank at the very edge of my field of vision; I thought it was probably just a rag rug or something (my vision was all screwy because I’d been crying so much), but I immediately got up to check. And there he was. I grabbed him up in my arms and cried into his fur for a good two or three minutes; I had to compose myself before I could call Bill to let him know that the boy was home. I’m still getting weepy just thinking about it.

It took me a little while to notice that he was limping, since I hadn’t actually let him walk when I first saw him—I’d carried him over to his food dish, and thought his refusal to eat was related to his being flipped out. But it turned out that he was in pain, and he wouldn’t let me close enough to his back left paw to see what was wrong. Feeling guilty for traumatizing him even more, I took him to the vet, and she found two big bite wounds on the paw. All Jasper had to say about it was, “You should see the other guy.”

He’s on antibiotics now, and a pain medication injection yesterday seems to have made him feel better; he’s still hopping, but he’s eating again and seems in relatively good spirits. He’s also showing no interest at all in the outdoors, which is fine with me. He won’t be going out after dark anymore, that’s for damn sure. I’d like to keep him inside for good, in fact, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to deny him the chance to lie in the sun once he’s feeling better. But no more evening trips outside. I don’t ever want to go through anything like this again. It’s bad enough when they get sick, and when they grow old and die, but at least then you have some warning of what’s going to happen; this was so unexpected, and so out of character, that it was worse somehow. (Or so it seemed at the time, anyway.) I’m still worn out and flippy from it, hence this long, rambling entry.

And meanwhile, I need a real three-day weekend, one free of viruses and kitty crises. Not sure where or when I’m going to get one of those, alas.