RIP, Tribble

I got a second call this afternoon confirming that my cat was hit by a car earlier this week.

Last Sunday night, when we got home from Pittsburgh, Tribble snuggled affectionately with us and then asked to go out. She went out for a few minutes, came back in to sit on Justin's lap, and then left again. We haven't seen her since.

After we distributed flyers we got calls from four different people who had seen a cute little calico who turned out not to be Tribble. I'm very grateful for those calls, though. Some of them came from manual laborers who spoke very little English and who used precious cell phone minutes to try to reunite a stranger with her pet. But in the end it was not my pet.

But now I've gotten two calls from neighborhood children saying they saw a cat matching Tribble's description being hit by a car on our block last week. There's no way to be sure it was her, but as we approach the week mark from her disappearance, that seems like the most likely scenario.

So I guess this is it. We've been keeping the back door open all week in case she finds her way home, which has led to an amusing stream of other neighborhood cats exploring our house. The neighbor's marmalade tabby came in and meowed at me as I was writing this. And a very cute little black cat has spent three nights here, and follows us around the compound as we search for Tribble, meowing loudly the whole way. I've started calling her Banshee.

As my sister said, the problem with cats is that you have to choose between forcing them to have an indoor life or most likely losing them to a car. Tribble wasn't happy as a street cat, but neither would she have been happy cooped up her whole life. I can't blame myself for letting her out to explore, even if it did shorten her life. But I still can't help but feel like I should have been able to do more to keep my little Tribster safe.