Fil on the Wind

It's now been three months since Fil escaped. She's out there on the wind somewhere. It's the saddest thing that's ever happened to me. It's seems unfathomable that she's been missing for so long—a quarter of a year. I remember back to the first night she was gone when I thought, of course, she's going to come home. Then I thought the same the next night and the next. But, as of yet, she has not. Now, I no longer think she's coming home.

The cats have escaped from various places many times, and have always come home, but this time, it's different.

I don't know if we've done everything we could do to find her, but I did almost everything I could think of. We combed the neighborhood. We talked to neighbors. We plastered flyers everywhere. We visited shelters and filled out reports. I even signed up for some scam-like thing called the Amber Pet Alert, because I was so desperate. I would call her from our backyard. I left food out. I left my smelly clothes on the porch so she could find my scent and make her way home, but she never did.

Many people called. Many. I would rush home and try to find her. But while each call began with a sense of hope and relief, each ended in disappointment and frustration. Everyone who called was certain that he/she had seen Fil. But they hadn't. She had just disappeared.

I'll never understand why, but people would tear down the flyers we put up. Some were even torn down by well meaning people. I would respond to a call and see that the person who called had a flyer in hand which was obviously ripped from a pole. I thought how stupid can these people be, but I couldn't say anything. Our immediate neighbors to the north we're continually ripping down the flyer that was posted on the street sign in front of their place. As soon as I saw that it was ripped down, I would replace it in an endlessly stupid cycle that I eventually lost. Many flyers where shredded. I would see them laying in tatters on the ground. One flyer was even burned. I don't get it. I even had one neighbor who called to tell me take them down. After about two months, I gave up and stopped posting them.

Fil came into my life when I was living in a small village in Samoa. She just showed up one day and insinuated herself in my room (along with her brother Makelani). I didn't have a camera with when when first arrived, so I'm missing images from when she was really tiny, which a little sad. I was told not to bring my camera to the village because there was no place to lock anything. I wish I had ignored that advice.

From the beginning, there was something special about Fil. She exuded a sense of calm and belonging. She almost never meowed and was very quiet, except when she purred. She purred like a machine. I named her Filemu which in Samoan means silence, quiet, calm, relaxed and peace, but mostly she was just called Fil (her full name is Filemu Suamalie, or "Sweet Silence").

I lived with her and Makelani for a year in Samoa. For the cats, it was mostly a great time. They could come and go as they pleased (more or less) and the jungle was their playground. Fil was a supreme hunter and would come home with mice and birds from outside and kill anything that moved, roaches, lizards, spiders, centipedes, etc. inside.

When they were around 6 months old, Fil (and Mak) went under the knife for their de-sexing surgery. A vet from the Samoan Animal Protection Society came out to my house, set up a field surgery unit in my backyard and went to work on the cats while I watched.

I sat with them during the surgery and nurtured them back to health as they recovered. It was really rough on Fil. Mak was just snipped, but Fil had an ovarian hysterectomy, which didn't go all that well. The vet had a hard time finding her tubes and the surgery went much longer than anticipated. Fil was all drugged up, so perhaps it was harder on me.

The only issue at my place in Samoa was the dogs. There were a few of them, and they were viscous. I felt like the cats could handle themselves and mostly they could. Usually I'd let them out and they'd be gone for a while.

I'd be sitting at my desk or in the kitchen and I hear this "BAM!!!! as one of the cats jumped onto the screen door to avoid a pursuing canine. Even Fil, normally so elegant and poised was less that sophisticated when fleeing the attack dogs.

One afternoon I was sitting at my desk I saw a blur of orange, brown and beige out of the corner of my eye. It was quickly followed by several dogs. I went outside and watched as Fil escaped into a banana tree. I had to rescue to her from the tree tops.

Another time I could hear a group of darking growling outside. I went out to see a scrum of four or five dogs surrounding something and when they parted, Fil bolted out towards me. It was a constant problem in Samoa for both the cats and myself.

I worked a normal (or abnormal depending on your perspective) 9-5 job in capital, Apia. In the evening when I would come home, I'd open the door and the cats would rush out on to the porch. Fil was so excited to see me, her tail would vibrate. It was the most endearing thing.

When I left Samoa, I brought the cats with me to Sedona, Arizona where I lived with my mom for a few months while I decided what to do next. Again, the cats loved it. They could come and go. The outdoors of the high desert was a perfect playground for cats. Trees to climb. Dried river beds to inspect. Grass and leaves to roll around in.

There were no predators to speak of despite the warnings of coyotes. The only problem was Fil and her penchant to wander. Once on her travels, she fell into a cactus and she growled at me while I removed burrs from her all over her body. Another time, she hadn't come before dusk and we went out to search for her. I found her on a post at someone's house on the other side of the arroyo behind my mom's place. She was assiduously avoiding some punter dogs below.

After a few months in Arizona, the cats and I moved to Vail, Colorado. I couldn't find new tags for them immediately and the best I could were these key chains.

The cats never really loved the snow or Colorado. Hard to the blame them. They are creatures of the jungle. On top of that, we lived in two places: The first was a condo where my roommates were drunkards. The second was a single wide in a trailer park near Beaver Creek. Each places had it charms for the cats, if not for me. They had access to the outside whenever they pleased and more than enough people around to bestow their affections on. They didn't love the cold, but it certainly didn't stop them from going outside.

But the adventure in Vail was a short experiment. Within a couple months, we were all headed back to California

We lived for a few months in Walnut Creek before setting in to an apartment in Alameda, a little island off the coast of Oakland: A return Island living!!! Not really.

The year we spent in Alameda was a serious mixed blessing. I lived on the third floor and there was no easy access to the outside world. I would allow them to wander the corridor because there was no open doorways. The roamed up and down the hall, taking in the smells emanating from my neighbor's apartments. Despite this confinement, Fil managed to escape a few times.

It was also in Alameda that I first starting leash walking the cats. Mostly Fil. Mak was really to skittish to be walked. Fil took to the leash reasonably well. She would sometimes flop around on the ground like a demented ferret and occasionally freak out when there was a loud noise, but she took direction, followed my whistle and seemed to enjoy it.

Alameda was also the first place where we lived that had a shower door and both cats discovered the joys of sitting on the door above while I was showering. I guess they liked the steam or something.

On the flip side, both Mak and Fil almost managed to get themselves killed in the apartment. Mak fell off the balcony—three stories to the ground. How he survived, I'll never know. And Fil almost managed to get herself entombed behind the drywall. .

We landed in Oakland, right on the border of both Emeryville and Berkeley, where we still live now. Initially I thought this place was perfect for the cats and that they'd be able to come and go like they had in the past. But then I discovered the neighborhood pit bulls and decided better of it.

The house did have a few things going for it. One was a large plate glass window that looked out on a back yard full of birds and squirrels. It was cat eye candy heaven. The second was an easily accessible and huge glass shower door for the cats to sit on.

In the last few years, it was rare that I showered without Fil hover above me on the shower door. The flow of the shower was her Pavlovian bell. As soon as she would hear she'd come into the bathroom, leap to the top of the door and sit there while I showered.

After a while that wasn't enough for her and she started to want to come down on my shoulders as soon as I finished. She was very considerate of her claws and would only jump down after I placed a towel around my neck. Sometimes should get impatient and get into jumping position and start meowing at me before I was ready with the towel or even sometimes before the shower was over.

Usually she was content to the get on shoulders and travel around my body. But there days, especially when I used a minty conditioner that she'd sort of go crazy, get on my head and start licking my hair. It's very well documented.

She was not always super graceful at this event. There was the time where slipped over my shoulder and, grabbing for anything that would stop her falling, almost ripped off one of ear lobes. Another time she slipped off my back and I only saved from crashing the shower floor by pinning her against the wall of the shower. She was less than pleased.

Fil was far from perfect. She sometimes refused to use the litter box and lately she would cry constantly to be let out of the house. (sadly, she got her wish). But she was a fantastic companion and I couldn't really ask for more in a cat. I loved her to pieces.

* * *

The other week, my sister sent me this posting from her neighborhood listserv:

I just wanted to let everyone know that I have a cat, Buddha, who goes in and out. He has been missing since the beginning of November, and I really thought something bad had to have happened to him. He never stays gone more than a few days, or a week at most. Well, this evening I opened the door, and in he walked! So, if you have a beloved pet who is missing, don't lose faith - they may be ok!

So, I suppose there is some small sliver of hope that Fil will make it back. However, with each day, the hope recedes and the likelihood that we'll see her again diminishes. We still visit the Oakland and Berkeley shelters on a weekly basis and I still sit on the porch and whistle for her and probably will until we move.

My one hope is that she just wandered into someone's house and they fell in love her and are keeping her. She's persistent and eventually she will find her way out and come home. The other possibilities are not really worth thinking about anymore.

Fil will live forever in my dreams and in my photos, and I have videos of her here, here and here, but I want her to live in my house, gently purring while she sleeps in the crook of my arm.