- Local grocery store (Instacart does not work well there).
- Further out grocery store (where wine is sold).
- Local hardware store (for bath strips and grab bars that husband now needs.)
 |
| Photo by Katy Buchanan |
You can see by the fading and running colors that the notices have been up for a while. It's now mid-May 2020; I think I've been seeing them since mid-April.
I hope Pal's people have found him or her, and have merely forgotten or neglected to take down the signs. That there are so many of them speaks to the love Pal's family has for this little cat.
For some reason, Pal reminds me of a chapter in "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," the opening tale in C.S. Lewis's "Chronicles of Narnia."
The chapter is titled "The Spell Begins to Break." The White Witch's terrible winter is nearing an end, yet she still maintains her power to turn Narnia's creatures to stone with a flick of her wand.
As the Witch and her dwarf (with captive Edmund in tow) slowly realize that her grip on winter is ending, they sledge along ever more slowly through Narnia's melting snow.
Father Christmas has already been by and the villains come upon a "a merry party" composed of squirrels, satyrs, a fox and a dwarf, all celebrating with meal of plum pudding and other delights.
It ends poorly for the little gathering. The Witch turns them to stone.
An increasingly remorseful Edmund thinks of of those small stone figures, "sitting there all the silent days and all the dark nights" until they just crumble away.
Right now, it seems the chances of Pal being found are crumbling, too.
Maybe the signs will come down. If not, they will continue to fade to illegibility, melancholy reminders of a beloved little cat, missing in all the silent days and all the dark nights.
