When all else fails...

...use a dustmop. Apparently, I've discovered a new grieving response that I never had before. I've begun cleaning everything. My office floor, my kitchen, the spice rack, cabinets that I hadn't given more than a cursory glance at for several...well, for a long time. A beloved significant other told me once that in the absence of the ability to change larger events, I should change small things over which I really do have control. Like my spice rack, apparently.

My office still feels too empty right now without Moonshadow in it, so I'm not writing a lot yet--hence, the cleaning and my non-typical hanging out in the other parts of my house. I will get back to it as soon as I can. Right now, I'm still catching myself listening for the sounds he made as he navigated his way through the upstairs, and I'm still being careful where I step when the lights are out, as though I might trip over him.

Last night the dog was lying reluctantly on the rug in my office, while my daughter and I watched her watching something we couldn't see. Whatever she was looking at, she had the same alert posture that she always had when the cat was coming her way, and she was staring fixedly at the area between where she was lying and my office door. There was no spider on the floor or anything like that--we checked.

I think my dog sees cat ghosts. Would that not be ironically funny if my cat was actually now haunting my dog? Sort of poetic justice for the dog "invading" Moonshadow's home four years ago...and such a very cat thing to do.