Too much to hope for?

Hope is your friend. I think.

Hope is what has gotten me through the last (nearly) four years with Indiana. It is the official tag phrase of our cancer organization, The Great Good Heart Animal Cancer Foundation. "Never Lose Hope." If I had given up hope on Indiana back on June 30, 2006, my life (and hers) would be decidedly different right now.

When our cat, Mr. Squiggles, went missing back in September of 2009, seven long months ago, hope was all we had. In the beginning, though we were devastated and confused, lost and aching with every fiber of our being, we still had hope that he'd return. It was just a matter of time! If we just looked hard enough, walked enough miles through the corn fields, knocked on enough doors, put up enough posters, answered enough false leads, let the ad in the paper run for enough weeks, consulted enough experts, checked Animal Control enough times, spent enough money, cried enough tears.

Eight months later, what is enough? My cat still hasn't been returned to me.

Just over a month ago, we thought we had found out what happened to our boy. For about 18 hours, our world crashed in on us. Our hope was gone. We felt like we couldn't breathe, like the world was so dark, so cold, and nothing could ever be right again. Then our "lead" turned out to be not so true. We had hope again.

Throughout this ordeal, we've said (and others have said to us) that if he's gone--dead--it's better at least to know. So there's no question. As it turns out, no, it's not better to know. The only acceptable resolution is to get our cat back. If he's dead, we don't want to know. Because having that hope, even if it's just a sliver, a tiny, tiny, sliver, it's still hope. And it's all we've got.