There are weirdnesses that happen all the time in people’s lives. 

Most often, they simply accept that it happened. Or they ignore it entirely. But they move on with life once more, eventually.  Now and then something will -strike- as weird, as odd. As... unnatural. And it makes you question the world at large. 

Today, I had one of those strikes. 

What follows, could likely be the script for some supernatural show. I don’t know if the ending is happy, sad, or bittersweet. But I know I keep crying for one reason or another, and I don’t really know -why-. 

A while back, I had a very rough time in my life. The few here who knew me then, or have had the... pleasure... of knowing me for that long likely remember me as being an annoying, prissy, whining little git. Needy and clingy to a fault, and full of blind niaeve optimism and energy that came from nothing and vanished into nothing.  I’ve had pets since I was born. Literally. My parents got a fish tank and filled it with tetras and the like in order to stimulate my mind and give me a sense of empathy. As I grew up, the pets became more complex than fish and tanaks. I graduated from fish to hamsters, from hamsters to cats and have always had some sort of animal or plant to care for. Something living to share my world with.  This is somewhat important to know because it sets the tone for the darkest part of my life. The second darkest point in my life, I should say.  I’m an only child, and so, having something, even just a fish or plant, to care for was important to me. It was something to share the house with when my mum was gone. It was something alive, and living that I knew wouldn’t leave me alone in the world.

I’ve always been afraid of being alone. Though I never really realized that was the fear. I can’t be utterly by myself. I have to have even the illusion of a living thing, or I turn inward very quickly, and even as a child... inward has always been very dark.  Around the time I graduated high school, 2003-04 (that’s another story) my life became complicated, and dark.  My grandmother became very ill, at the same time I lost my long-time companion, a cat named Guido, and was quickly losing my second cat, George. They had been poisoned by the wet food we’d been feeding them, a bad batch of gluten and grains that wasn’t pulled and caused liver failure in Guido, and a slow kidney failure in George.  My grandmother contracted an infection that ate away at her spine, eventually paralyzing her and by the time it was discovered, it was essentially too late. She died on the operating table and her children began a massive spat for the inheritance.  My mum and I had actually cared for her all of my life, and several of the other children were demanding their share of the money, they inhibited the investigation into her death, and lost us the ability to find out what actually killed my grandmother.  My mother was working two-three jobs, and I was alone most of the time. Either she was working or asleep. While I finished school and tried to deal with life and being a teenager on the cusp of true adulthood and getting into college.  All while caring for an aged, dying cat. 

The weirdness comes in that today, 12-19-2018, the vet clinic we’ve gone to for over twenty years is closing. The doctor is retiring and the nurses that remain are moving to a clinic on the furthest side of town from us. So I went to get the medical records of my current cats. The records should span for a dozen cats, seven of which live with me, three with my best friend, and one each at my dad’s and ex husband’s.

I got the records for sixteen. 

The dozen I expected: Tutankhamen , Cleopatra, Cesar, Ramses, Isis, Osiris, Hecate, Freya, Phoenix, Ozymandias, and Imhotep.

Plus :: Kalifah, Fenris, Jaeger and Allie

Kalifah was a black and white cat that was clipped by a car, thrown into our yard, and came around the same time that George developed a life-threatening cancer. She amazingly got on with Guido, and seemed as though she was going to be able to keep the aging old tom company after his bond mate would have died.  She didn’t have to. George somehow beat a cancer the size of a baseball, a canceer type that kills 95% of the animals it infects, and nearly 100% of the -cats- it infects. He survived, the cancer went into complete remission and Kali... vanished.  She simply wasn’t in the house one day. She had gone to bed in her normal space, and she was simply... gone. No sign that she’d ever been in the house in the first place.  I disregarded her medical records, realizing I’d forgotten to notify the vet that she’d been dead for over a decade.

Allie was a bit trickier to recall. But after looking over the record itself I remembered. Like Kali, she’d been struck by a car ahead of us. We gathered her up, wrapped her in a warm jacket and rushed her into emergency care. She was xrayed, tested, and the injuries she’d sustained had been too great, in addition to the fact she came back FIV and FLV positive. There was no mercy in allowing her to live with the injuries and the illness, and we had three cats that we couldn’t risk becoming infected even if she hadn’t been beyond saving. We left Allie Cat with the clinic, and they put her to sleep so she wouldn’t suffer further.

Jaeger was a flame point siamese, he and his brother Kaiju were picked up when they were about five days old, abandoned by “Slut-Whore” a queen who lives on campus and gets pregnant, only keeping kittens who are highly visible because she cons people out of more food when they see she’s preggers and/or with kittens. Kaiju was a dark tabby, and Jaeger was a flame point siamese, both were runts.  They had behavioral issues, fighting with my established cats, and being bullied by Tut and the older cats. So my dad took them from me before I had them neutered. He refused to have them neutered in a timely fashion, and got angry with them for spraying in the house. Putting them outside and turning them into outdoor cats. Jaeger... was not suited for outdoor life.  It breaks my heart knowing that I allowed them to live with someone who didn’t care for them, and even now, knowing that he likely died because I couldn’t save him tears my chest in half and knots my insides.

But then, there was Fenris. 

Seeing my naming patterns, I can assure you that Fenris is a name I very much would give a cat. Especially if that cat were a black cat with big green eyes and scraggly teeth. But I don’t know this cat.  The time on his records states that his first visit was in 2003, which was the same time that my life began to fall apart. It would hav ebeen just after Guido died, and when George was sick and when my Grandmother was alive.  His last check in was in 2006. Three years later. Just before George died and a year before Tut came into my life. 

The problem here becomes... I never had a black cat before I got Ramses. I have no recollection of a black cat, or any cat, during that time EXCEPT George. 

The only thing I remember is how sick George was, and how sick Guido had been, the long nights in the hospital, and struggling to find a job or make my own money. I remember a cold empty house wherein I had nothing. No plants, no fish, no cats, no family.

I remember the nights wishing I had a pet and thinking how I was going to have to ask my mum about getting a new Betta fish or the like, just so I could have something alive in the house while she was working 16 hours a day.  I recall long nights crying, and unable to sleep. I remember staring at the sky. I remember playing too many video games and becoming increasingly depressed. 

But I have no recollection, not one iota of memory of a black short hair cat named Fenris. 

That’s the weirdness. It’s as if something happened to him, or to me, and every memory was wiped out of him. I have no idea what he looked like, what he played like, or how he sounded. I have no memory whatsoever of a black cat named Fenris. 

Yet, when I asked my friend if I had ever mentioned him to them. One said yes, I had, but it was a long long time ago. And my ex said he remembers me mentioning taking a black cat in during that time, but no other details. 

The only proof that Fenris existed is in a medical record I didn’t know about, for a cat I can’t prove ever existed.... there are no pictures (I have at least one picture of every cat I’ve ever had, save for Allie) But... nothing of Fenris exists. 

Either he removed himself from my life, entirely. He never existed, or something happened so horrible that I’ve wiped him 100% from my memory.

And yet... all I know is that I keep crying, my chest gets tight, and my head hurts, and I start crying tears that burn my face and leave red welts on my cheeks, which are the tears I usually cry when I’m depressed and in pain...