I have returned from my cottage - a year older, well fed, slightly tanned and with the unbelievable sense of loss. I don't usually return from my cottage feeling like this. Yes, I often feel disappointed or depressed at having to return to my humdrum existence in the big, smelly city, and there was that vacation two years ago when I discovered that I was suffering from chronic depression and anxiety, but that was very different. We lost Chester. For those of you who do not know Chester, let me briefly explain. He is very much my mother's cat, though I fit into his idea of family, though no one else does.

He came to my mother as a feral animal, watching her from the bushes around the house, looking in at her for an entire winter, but never letting her near him. Eventually, she gave in and began to put out food for him. Eventually, in the mid or late spring, he let her touch him. One day, while she was sitting on the recliner, he jumped up and lay down between her feet. She was so stunned she dared not move a muscle. By the end of the summer, he had joined the household. He didn't engraciate himself on us or the other cats, he simply found us to be so curiously odd, and yet also comforting. For a long time, simple actions all cat owners know, like a raised bum and tail in answer to a stroke down the back, were utterly foreign to him. He had never been socialised and when he finally began to mimic the other cats, he looked terribly confused as he did so. I remember once, lying down on the floor in the living room (for what purpose I can't recall) and Chester sneaking up as though I was behaving in a completely abnormal way - as far as he was concerned, I was. In his experience, lying on the floor was something people did NOT do.

He came a long way over the five years he was with us. I sort of feel like he's been living on borrowed time since he was poisoned by anti-freeze three years ago. He almost died twice, each time the vet managed to reinflate his kidneys, but his buddy, Spike, a neighbour's cat, didn't make out so well as Chester. Ever since, Chester has had a closely monitored diet, and not infrequent boughts of diahrrea and/or vomiting after consuming even tiny portions of things on the "Bad food" list. He is a comical cat, though few would be able to agree as he has always eschewed the presence of visitors, often slinking away upon their arrival and then frolicking about once they'd left. His bond to my mother was incredible and she returned it with a huge love.

We knew we were lucky that he deigned to join our family. We knew he was a special cat. We knew we'd never be able to make him an 'indoor' cat and on Saturday after dinner when he agitated to go out, we let him. When he struck off in the wrong direction, heading for the very wild beaver creek, my mother tried to call him back. He stopped, turned and looked at her, but would not come back. He went with purpose. Anything could have happened in the wilderness - more than likely that he was caught by a fisher - or else his kidneys could have failed. He'd been showing some symptoms leading up to his departure. We won't know. I went to try to find him, walking all through the broad territory of the beaver creek and swamp, south of our property, but found no trace. After two days, we knew something was wrong.

It was the dreams that Mom and I had on the same night, two nights ago, that made us truly suspect he'd died. Hers was simple: he came to the window of the cottage, peeked in, looked at her with a calm and unworried expression, and then went away again, out into the night. Mine was a little more symbolic. I dreamed that I came out the front door of the (city) house and found on the ground at my feet his red collar. The collar, still done up, as though he'd simply slipped it, lay perfectly round on the cement and the tag faced up, showing the phone number at our cottage. As I bent to pick it up, Chester came out of the bushes at the side and rubbed my hand, then circled my legs rubbing them, too, his tail held high above him. Then, before I can get my hands around him to pick him up, he slips away into the bushes again and is gone, leaving me with only his collar in my hand.

My mother is still up there, not quite able to bring herself to let go, even though she knows he isn't coming back. Willi, my little girl, followed him around in the bush, like a small, bouncy shadow, and has spent the last three days, searching for him in all his usually spots. The little depression in the ground behind the house. Up on the blueberry rock, where she even dragged me up as if to say, "This is his spot, but I can't find him, can you find him for me?" It is incredibly sad. I have always wondered what it must be like to lose a cat and never know what happened, and now I know.

...

And now, in other much happier news, the rest of the holiday. For my birthday, my mother bought me some canvas board, turpentine, linseed oil and a palatte knife to go with the oil paints I had inherited. Then, she also gave me painting lessons. In my whole artistic life, I have never used oil paints, and of course, as some of you know, my mother had been a prolific artist. When I was a teenager, I'd never have wanted or appreciated her helping me with my art, but I'm older and wiser and realise now that there's no better teacher for me. And she's a good teacher. I did two landscapes, each of a similar view, but from two different approaches. The second one involved her taking all my thin detail brushes away leaving me only my broad brushes. That was really neat.

There was a birthday dinner at Jean's place with her son Michael and that was delicious. It also allowed me one final lesson for Mike with his new computer. I spent three nights working on his system, trying to get it to work. In the end, I had to wipe everything and reinstall Windows because he'd managed to get his computer infected with a worm (in less than a month of owning the damn thing). I set up his email acounts and reinstalled everything and generally made things work and I only had to call Rick once for help. *laugh*

My mother managed to break her foot the day before I arrived, which wasn't really a good thing, but it actually turned out kind of okay. The special cast she was given was one she could take off at night and while it was on during the day, it gave her much-needed ankle support so, in effect, her mobility was increased. It meant I did a lot of shlepping on her behalf, and when we walked together, we had to go slooooooooow, but it didn't impede her greatly.

Anyway, my vacation was nice, but really sad, and despite that, I still wish I were up at the cottage rather than here. I'm sitting surrounded by the mess of a half-packed room and knowing I need to take down my art ASAP. Once the art is off the walls, this place stops being 'home' and I can get on with things. So, I shall sign off and get on with it.