Losing Ribble

Chances are, if you’ve ever had a pet, you’ve experienced a loss when they’ve died, disappeared, or you've had to leave them behind. It can be a powerful grief.

My really close friend Cabby literally lost her cat Ribble last Sunday morning, and when she told me, I was sad, although nowhere near as sad as she. I’m sad for Cabby who’s feeling guilty and bereft, but also for Ribble, whose actual fate is unknown.

Cabby has two other cats, but Ribble is her most recent acquisition, and she was drawn to him because he is a Manx (tailless) and because he’s an orange cat. She learned that he also doesn’t object to riding in a car, and she thinks he actually likes it. She takes him with her when she goes out to photograph birds, sometimes a day trip, sometimes overnight, and he is an excellent companion for her. And when she’d come over the hill from Reno to San Jose to visit, she’d bring Ribble, along with her two birds. That my cat Sheba would head for the hills whenever Ribble showed up is not at issue, but Cabby decided to keep Ribble pretty much confined to the spare bedroom where she sleeps when she visits.

So I got to know Ribble too, and he is a delightful little guy, and if he and my Riley hissed at each other for a while, that was OK. After three or four visits, they learned to accept one another. And I came to love Ribble too.

So when Cabby called me Sunday from somewhere near Fallon, NV, to tell me that she’d lost Ribble and couldn’t find him, I was distressed. She’d stayed in Winnemucca Saturday night, then planned to stop at the Wetlands near Fallon. She made a couple of stops to photograph the birds, then realized that Ribble wasn’t in the car anymore. She returned to the two places she’d stopped, found nothing, and asked park workers to call her if they saw a tailless orange cat sporting a black harness. Then she realized she left her cell phone (and only phone) in Winnemucca, so drove 2 hours East to retrieve the phone, then 2 hours back. She continued to search for Ribble, and spent last night in Fallon to resume the search on Monday morning.

When she called me Monday morning at work, it wasn’t with the good news I’d hoped for; she couldn’t find him anywhere. She said there were coyotes all over, and hawks, perhaps eagles, and Ribble was certainly no match for a coyote, and even if a raptor couldn’t lift the little guy, he could be badly damaged by talons.

She was crying, and I cried with her. She said she was done looking, had spent three hours in her search and was certain he was dead. We cried harder. She said she would go home, clean up and go to work to take her mind off Ribble.

Cabby is a superb photographer—not a professional, but only because she doesn’t want to bother with selling her art. If someone wants more than one picture, she’ll charge them only for paper and ink. When I received a later email from her saying she was going back to the Wetlands to keep looking, she said “I’ll never pick up a camera again.” Hopefully, that’s a statement spoken out of guilt and grief. It would be an even greater sadness for her to give up her passion for photography and birds.

I’ve had my own share of pet catastrophes, and with one of them I spent a lot of time with the woulda, coulda, shouldas, as I’m sure Cabby is doing. She doesn’t remember, but she may have left the car door open for a few seconds. Maybe the kitty jumped out an open window when she stopped. If only! If only she’d rolled up the window high enough to keep him in and let air in. If only she’d checked when she left the first place to make sure he was in the car. If only!

My heart goes out to her, and I prayed Sunday night about as hard as I’ve ever prayed for anything, that she and Ribble would be reunited. But she can’t take back whatever she did or didn’t do that could have led to his escape from the car.

To deny herself her passion—her photography—will not return Ribble to her, if he is indeed dead. I can see that it might be a painful reminder for a while, but my hope is that she will revoke her “never” statement and sadly but proudly return to her camera. It it’s anthropomorphizing to say this, then so be it, but I think Ribble would want her to do just that.

I’m still hoping that Ribble is out there somewhere, laying low, rolling in whatever’s necessary to cover his scent, and will survive his ordeal.

He’s not used up all nine lives yet.

More to come...