Sunday, August 30, 2009

Posters of the Missing


My cat is still missing. It will be a week on Tuesday. I really miss him. I keep thinking about him and hoping he didn’t meet an ugly end at the hands of some cruel twisted individual(s).

There is entirely too much evil in the world. I was reading about the highway of tears and how now they think they have a suspect in the murders, although so far they are only looking for one woman’s body, and that one woman is white. For those who don’t know what the highway of tears is, it’s a stretch of highway running from Prince George to Prince Rupert where for the last 40 years primarily aboriginal women have been going missing while hitchhiking.

The suspect is in prison for murdering his brother. The police are digging up the property and looking in a well that smells like diesel and might have been used to burn something. They even have special dogs that can locate remains, and a ground penetrating radar device.

I could never work in forensics or criminology. I think it would be a very bleak feeling dealing with that kind of evil day in and day out. Bleakness is a terrible feeling. That kind of loss of belief in human goodness.

There ARE good people in the world still. I know this. My cat could have adopted himself into another family of nice people. But I still think he would come home because they wouldn’t know him well enough to know he likes Friskies.

A missing cat and a missing woman are not the same things. I know this. There won’t be an investigation into where my cat went, and if someone did do something to him, he or she (but probably he) will most likely get away with it. But then it makes me think about all the unsolved cases of missing and murdered Aboriginal women and how sometimes it seems as if our lives are equal to those of cats. Just more faces peering out of faded posters, dotting the landscape, reminding us that we are not safe or protected.

I wish my cat had been an indoors cat. I feel guilty for letting him go outside this summer at mum’s. And now I’m in limbo, wondering if I will ever see his sweet face again.

2 comments:

Amak said...

Just an anecdote, I'd like to share with you:

I live with a single mother and her 8 year old kid (whose father ran away with the neighbour last year. Yeah, those things happen.)

Since his father left, the 8 year old would always go to bed with Wali (one of his two outdoor cats.) And then a few weeks ago, Wali simply disappeared. The boy was devastated. We were all devastated. Then it just so happened that Wali came back a couple of weeks later. Since then, he keeps coming back home on and off, though we are all convinced that he has been 'adopted' my another family.

This may not mean anything to you as an anecdote, but I thought I'd share it, 'coz may be, your cat actually found another family (which is better than him having had an ugly end, no?) And if your cat has found another family, that also means that there ARE good people out there who are taking care of your cat.

Meg Torwl said...

Kia ora Thirza,

Yeah I wish the police would put as much time in to finding out what has happened to all the missing women, especially all the missing Aboriginal women.

I hope Schrodinger comes back! I too had a cat who went missing twice from different homes (i think she didn't like it when I drove off for the weekend in our van she sometimes lived in) anyways I found her both times! One freaky time after a month of crying and calling in the streets and putting up posters i took a poster in to a store and the guy said he knew where she was! some streets away in a house that was being built next to where he lived, the builders had been feeding her ( : she was fat and happy and pleased to see me.

another house she really didn't like coz it had 3 other cats living in it, and 17 cats across the street! so she kept running back to where we used to live, a couple of miles, to a neighbors house with a big veggie garden, a nice couch, and some corgi dogs she hung out with in the garage! it was like i never knew you were gay, only i never knew you liked dogs, corgi dogs!

i am a perenial reader of your blog, and we' met around VIVO a few times. i gotta tell you I went to see your lesbian vampire movie at OOS and along with the rest of the audience nearly peed my pants laughing! So funny, and your dry narration! brilliant as always! do i read a deeper subtext also about being a minority among minorities? maybe thats just me projecting....

anyways i'm doing a spoken word show in december 'thats so gay' at Balancing Acts disability arts festival in Calgary about solidarity across lines of gender, sexuality, disability, race; and species - in the case of purple start fish...i can hardly believe i get to be all my selves, not folding any part of me away...

which i think is why i appreciate your blog so much, a person trying to be true to all themselves with honesty, pride, guts, and the inevitable self-doubt so many of us live with.

and i've learnt some really useful techno stuff from your blog over the years when you are video editing and blogging and trying new programs out! thanks!

peace n respect

Meg Torwl