wombling wreck

I'll admit it: I felt I'd displayed a fair bit of calm, head-on-shoulders resourcefulness through the crisis.  I'd go so far as to say I was feeling quite proud of myself.  But pride comes before a fall, and that afternoon, I went to pieces.

Like a character I'd once seen in some awful, hammed up, straight-to-TV movie about a phantom pregnancy,  I was haunted by distant cries (well, mewings). I chased shadows of ghost cats behind walls where no cats were to be found and went back to scour the already scoured tool shed more times than is reasonable or - if I'm honest - sane.  I was a bag of shaky nerves.  I just prayed that Agatha would come back, that we'd be able to confirm that she had both Joe AND Fred with her.  But she had disappeared. And so had all trace of the kittens.

If my class that evening was a slow-motion car crash, well, that's just the way it was, I'm afraid.

It's a strange form of helpless grief that comes from unexplained loss like that.  No story, no evidence, no closure, no idea if there's anything you can do or could've done.

I'm dealing with it better second time around.

She finally showed up for dinner at 11pm, and continued to come for the next few days without ever giving her position away.  She moved stealthily and didn't dwell in one place for long.  She looked like she was still giving milk, but how could we really know?  Her eyes were full of sadness, but was it just for Ginger?

They were full of mistrust and suspicion, too.

She'd stationed poor Charlie way up on top of the high wall to keep watch over her that first night with Smokey Joe, and it seemed like the whole event had left her with a very immediate and tangible sense of threat that took her a long time to shake.  At the time, I read it as pure paranoia, but in light of the last two days, I wonder if maybe it was a form of sixth sense or premonition.

They did come back in the end, you see, Agatha, Smokey Joe and Fred.  But barely a week later - just yesterday morning - it became apparent that the little ones had gone missing; simply vanished into thin air, as far as we can tell.

It's Agatha that's the wreck this time.

Haunted by mewings, chasing shadows behind walls where no kittens are to be found, scouring the neighbourhood over and over, howling into the darkness.
She's one sad cat.

And it simply breaks our hearts to watch.

Sad Agatha 

Where do you look for missing kittens?

When do you give up hope of finding them?

How do you console a mourning mother?

Anyone got any answers?