Tribute

She came to my house 15 years ago when she was a kitten. She happened to stray into our house.
She was winsome, affable and amiable. It wasn't long before she joined a member of our family. We named her Liz. She was strong. She was a queen of our neighborhood, relentless to her neighbor cats when they intruded even an inch into her territory.

She literally "lived" with us for several years.　We loved her, but somewhere down the line, she began to often stay out for a night. A night became 2 nights, 3 nights and finally a week until it became rare to see her in our house. One day she came back wearing a new necklace we had never seen.This proved our suspicion that she might have changed her owner from us to someone we do not know... Everyone in our neighborhood loved her. We can't blame if they want to live with her. We can't really "possess" a cat because a cat never belongs to anyone. We accepted the fact and welcomed her every time she haphazardly came back to our house once in a long while. She is over 15. She lost some of her teeth. We laughed when her tongue sometimes sticks out from where the teeth used to be. She got old after all. She has every right to do whatever she wants to do.
Two weeks ago my wife saw a cat, a black spot on its nose, young, small and agile, sitting on a discarded wooden box which was one of the Liz's favorite places in summer. From that time on the cat has been witnessed at many places of Liz's favorite by every member of our family. We wondered and discussed why Liz, the queen, is allowing it to "invade" her territory. An ominous foresight crossed everyone's mind. We haven't seen her since my wife first saw the spotty. The time has come... She is gone... We know from our experience that cats go somewhere before they die...
Since then there is a vast emptiness in our house.
I haven't expected it to be like this because for the past couple of years even when she was here she wasn't really here if you see what I mean. Rarely did she come back our home and if she did it was only to check if some cat else might not be sneaking in my house to replace her. Our house was only a part of her territory. Her home was somewhere else. We forgot about her while she was away. Then what is this emptiness?
There is a cup in the corner of the living room with which she was fed bonito flakes. A brown flake still sticks on the rim. Beside it is a water plate half dried. On the door, on the carpet, are the scratch marks she made to sharpen her claws. How many times did we told her to stop it?... Even when she was not in our house, we saw her on a roof, on my car, on a fence under the shade of a tree, walking across the street, entering neighbor's house...
In fact, I see now I had it exactly wrong. Even when she wasn't here, she was here, if you see what I mean. And now she is not here at all.
My wife said that every time Liz came back for a territory-check-up tour, she could not but see the cat off thinking that it might be the last she would ever see her. She was right. I should have felt like her when Liz came back home, instead of picking her up and holding her tight not minding whether she liked it or not.
We knew this day would come sooner or later. But when it actually came it was totally different. The hard and unexpected part is the realization not just that our cat is not here but that the kitten she was is gone forever. We lived together though I can't say fully. She is gone without giving us even a chance to say goodbye and thank you... thank you for straying into our house, for living with us, for leaving us, for being here, for being there... and thank you for leaving us a hope that she might be still alive somewhere else.
Life moves on. Kittens grow up, move away and go, and if you don't know this already, believe me, it happens faster than you can imagine.
The photo is Liz. My wife took it when she last came back home 3 weeks ago.