This is not a post about politics. It is not a post about poetry, either, not that I’ve done one of those for a while.
You see, our beautiful, beloved, black and white cat, Mystery, slipped out of the house a few days before Christmas, and we have not seen her since. Given her age, her health (she was on medication for thyroid issues), and her deep affection for my husband (there is no way that Mystery wouldn’t have come back to her daddy if she had been able to do so), we have to presume that she is dead. We have, of course, letterboxed, and put up posters, and rung vets and visited shelters, and done all the things that one does when a pet goes missing, and we will continue doing so for a little longer, but realistically, we know her chances were never high. If she hasn’t turned up by now, she isn’t going to.
I realise that it is self-indulgent to write Mystery’s obituary here, bracketed by my thoughts on microparties and asylum seekers and the current government, but I figure that thanks to the National Library Archive, this blog is the one thing in my life that I know will survive me. Mystery was an excellent cat, and deserves to be remembered for posterity. Also, I kind of like the idea that some future student, diligently researching The Role of Microparties in Australian Government in the 21st Century, or the Decade of The Seven Prime Ministers, or The Rise and Fall of Blogging in the Early 21st Century will run across this post and be bemused by it.
(To that future student: looking at pictures of cats on the internet is a traditional method of procrastinating in the early 21st Century, so you should definitely read on – this is an important opportunity to connect with the past through re-enacting its cultural rituals.)
(To anyone else reading this, it’s OK. I know you are here for the politics, and I won’t be offended if you don’t read this post.)
Mystery, with her Daddy.
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