The waiting is the hardest part. I hope.

When it rains it pours. Big, heavy, buckets of unfortunate occurrences.

My cat is still missing. Who knew a damn cat could drive an otherwise rational person to distraction?

There's some big doings going on at the Chicky compound that I need to prepare for and Mr. C is pretty much unavailable to help due to work commitments. So the next couple of weeks are going to be a bit stressful.

And worst of all (and I mean way, way worse than all the other stresses that are just buzzing around my head) I just found out that my grandmother may or may not have cancer - and I'm leaning towards the "may" since she's being sent to a much bigger hospital 45 minutes away from her house because the local hospital can't help her - but we won't find out what's going on for at least another few hours if not another day. I don't like this whole waiting thing. It makes a person feel just a wee bit helpless.

Gram had a CAT scan done yesterday after weeks of feeling poor (and not going to the doctor to find out what was the matter because my grandmother is the most STUBBORN woman on the face of this earth) and the results, apparently, were not good. They think it may be ovarian cancer.

My grandmother has already lost her only sister to ovarian cancer years ago. This, I'm assuming, is the outcome she was afraid of. Her reason for putting off the doctors until she finally could not wait any longer.

No one deserves to be ill but my grandmother really doesn't deserve it. She hasn't exactly had an easy life.

She was 17 when she became a mother for the first time and had three more children in rapid succession until, when the youngest, my mother, was one, her young husband died tragically in a freak accident. She was a widow with four kids before the age of 24, can you imagine that? Soon after she married my Papa and had seven more children. Eleven kids in all. She's buried three of them already and one is a vegetable. My Papa died late last year.

So, to recap: Two husbands dead, Eleven children - three dead and one in a vegetative state, one sister dead, oh and a father who died when she was young and a mother who left her - emotionally, anyway - to be cared for by her grandmother. A lifetime of work and toil and sacrifice. She doesn't deserve one more hardship in her life. She deserves to live the rest of her days in peace, surrounded by family and friends, with nothing more to worry about than keeping up on all our birthdays.

I thank you all for the kind thoughts about my cat but if you could find it in yourself to keep one more person who really needs it in your thoughts and maybe even your prayers (if you do that sort of thing) I would appreciate it. My grandmother, though she doesn't know about this online life I have, would also certainly appreciate it. I believe in the power of positive thinking and I can't seem to muster any of my own right now. Gram will probably have surgery in the next day or so, send some good thoughts her way. Okay?

Chicky and her "Gwammy", the happiest I've seen her in a long time.

Oh where oh where has my little cat gone? Oh where oh where could he be?

I've lost my cat.

No, not Nina the Wonder Lump, aka Jabba the Cat. No, Dizzy, the yellow cat, aka The Pisser.

I give new meaning to the term "wet spot".

I haven't actually lost him. It's not like I put him down somewhere and forgot where I left him. He walked out the front door yesterday afternoon and I haven't seen him since. I'm worried, really worried. I miss him, the little shit. I want him home with me where the only thing he has to fear is my foot if he pees in my bed again.

Oh yeah, the cat has urinated where I sleep and I still want him to come home.

The damn cat has pissed on my bed (hence the nickname) no less than 10 times. He howls incessantly when he wants to go out, or come in, and if I don't answer his death screams he rips the weather stripping around my front door to shreds. He's also destroyed a couch and the arm of one chair with his talons, which is preferable to what he could do to my skin if I were to pet him one second longer than what he would like.

But Dizzy loves to snuggle on my shoulder, his purring sounding like a chain saw in my ear. When I'm outside walking with Chicky he'll follow us around our cul-de-sac and then he'll sit on our stairs waiting for us to come home. He's affectionate with my little girl no matter how many times she pulls on his tail or thumps him with a drum stick. He's the dog I always wanted.

Mr. C and I have an idea of what might have happened. 1) He wandered into someone's shed or garage and got stuck there, 2) He's been injured, either by car or neighborhood dog, or 3) He was mistaken for another neighborhood cat who has been lost for the last two weeks and was delivered to that home.

I no longer have the flyer about the other lost cat and I have no idea where that home is exactly so I can't go knocking on their door to find out if they have Dizzy. I can only wait and wonder. And stare out the window like a worried mother whose child has broken curfew.

I miss my cat and I'd really like him to come home now. A cat, I'm all worked up about a damn cat. I feel a little foolish. But I promise, if he comes home I'll stop threatening him with taxidermy. I'll stop telling him he'd look really good as a fur scarf. I won't even be mad if he shows up at my door, clawing the weather stripping at 3am. I just want to know he's safe.