Cassie

Two days ago, I was wandering around the garden, with Juliet and Severus, looking for Cassie-cat. Out of nowhere, she called to me and I saw her sat a little way away. I picked her up and walked around the garden cuddling her for a few minutes and talking to her. After a while, she wriggled to get down, so I placed her back on the grass. Without looking back, she stalked off, purposefully if rather unsteadily, towards next door's garden.

She hasn't been seen since. The intervening 48 hours have been chilly with persistent heavy rain and Cassie-cat was extremely frail. We've searched, put up posters, called, asked permission to search neighbour's gardens and posted leaflets into the nearest 40 odd houses. We had some very kind responses from people and one or two reported having seen her earlier, but not since my garden cuddle.

Although when a cat goes missing there is always the faintest of hopes that they will turn up again eventually, with Cassie-cat in the condition she was, I think in our hearts we all have to accept that she's gone and she's not coming back. We had been going to keep her in, but she was desperate to go out - and we wanted what were sure would be her last few days in any case to be as happy as possible and on her own terms, following her own instincts, so we let her go. It was nice and sunny at the time. All we can hope now is that she curled up somewhere out of the rain and slipped into a peaceful sleep.

Cassie-cat and Merlin came into my life many years ago as tiny kitten fluff balls. I hadn't yet met Jon; Cassie and Merlin were my faithful companions through five or six years of a fairly tumultuous time in my life. They were my first "grown up" pets, the first I had after leaving home and the two of them will always hold such a special place in my heart. Merlin was the joker, into everything and everyone, the handsome, playful attention-seeker. Cassie-cat was the beautiful sage, much more cautious but with a depth of wisdom about her that you couldn't ignore. Together, they were witness to a lot of tears during that "pre-Jon" period of my life. I think - apart from the obvious grief of losing a much loved pet - that might be why I feel so utterly bereft at Cassie's loss. After we lost Merlin a while ago, she was my last link to that strange other life I led. Back then I was slim, pretty, confident and relatively affluent - not happy, but a very different person to the one I am now. She knew the other me in a way that my beloved Jon and Emily didn't and when they came into my life she gave them her undying loyalty and love too.

Poor Emily has wept a river for Cassie-cat; not knowing the exact circumstances of what has happened to her is very tough. So many unknowables to torture ourselves with.

Cass Cass, we love you and we miss you. We're so sorry we weren't there for you at the very end, but it seems that was the way you wanted it, perhaps hoping to spare us and you the pain of a protracted goodbye. The more I think of it now, the more I think you knew you weren't coming back when you walked out of the garden that last time. Sweet dreams, Caca-wa-ah-ah and happy reunion with your brother Merlin. It must have been a very long two and half year separation for you both.