Acantha

Acantha and I have been together for over 11 years. When we first met we didn’t particularly like each other. Don’t get me wrong I like animals, but I thought she was an unnecessary inconvenience to Niki and my carefree studanthood. Someone would have to be around to look after her all the time, pay for all her shots and to have her fixed etc etc. I wiped my hands of her. I told Niki she can keep her as long as she takes care of Acantha and I don’t have to do anything. It didn’t work out that way. Soon enough I fell for her, and I fell very very hard. So hard in fact that when I moved out Niki let her move out with me. She was only about six months old and got knocked up, she had four awesome pitch black kittens, she gave birth to them while she was lying on my stomach. It was a moment. Point is, we were tight. We slept in the same bed, when I was poor, we even ate the same food (we both ate rice). For years she was my best friend, and when I went overseas she was one of the things I missed most. I am one of those people who gets funny about her cat. I have her picture on my phone and on my ipod, everyone knows about my cat and asks me after her health. I moved to Tamboerskloof a while ago, with Acantha of course. After about a year of living in town she started disappearing for a couple days at a time. She’d come in for meals but then leave again. Then she didn’t come back for a couple of weeks and I started freaking out. I made the flyers with her picture on it, took it to all the vets, contacted DARG, the SPCA and put up pictures of her all around the area I live. Then after about three months of this, Acantha jumps through the window like nothing had happened. I was ecstatic. I got her all her favourite things to eat, tried to spoil her rotten. She would come by every once in a while for food and a bit of affection and then she’d leave again. She smelled like someone else’s perfume so I assumed she was spending time with someone else, maybe someone who didn’t work, who could spend a lot of time with her. I felt guilty for not being able to be at home all the time to just spend time with her, but I have to go to work, and the nature of my work is that sometimes I work a lot. So then she stopped coming by the house, at all. It’s been a couple of months now and I don’t know what to do anymore. There was a time when I might have had to move away, and I couldn’t because she might come back and look for me. But nothing yet. I’ve cried and prayed, and asked and waited, but nothing. Gethyn is getting a bit tired of all this. He suggests I move on. He told me she most likely moved in with some old lady with nothing better to do than feed her pilchards all day, but then isn’t that what parents tell their kids when the family pet dies? It moved in with a nice old lady, or it moved to a farm. I don’t know if she’s alive or dead, but everyone around me seems to believe she has died and I should get over it. So now, what Gethyn has suggested is that we get a cat. Perhaps just a way to get me distracted and get me to move on from Acantha, I don’t know. Would it be a betrayal of her to get a cat? I’ve made it very clear that if we do, and Acantha should come back, she will still have to be the main bitch in the house. That is all understood. I am very excited at the prospect of having a cat in my life again, but I still wish it could have been Acantha. I think we will get that kitten, but it won’t be no Acantha.