Taco!!!!!!!!!

Unbelievable! Taco's alive! I can't believe it, it doesn't seem even possible! Rainy and I were going over to the little trailer to clean it out. Towards the end of summer I started trying to both bag up trash and salvage what I could, packing stuff in those plastic storage things. (It's heart-hurting work, because most of the stuff is what we had to hastily stuff in Glad bags when we had to get out of our old house, and all the old pictures, and the tiny socks and shoes and Fran's stuff, and the kids' drawings and art work, and the nice stuff I used to decorate my old home with just makes me sad.) Anyway, the last three weeks I've just been too busy with school to take a couple hours off each Sunday and work down in the little trailer. When we were frantically searching for Taco last weekend we all, individually and together, checked the little trailer and there was no sign of him. I always leave the back sliding glass door of the little trailer open just wide enough for a cat but to even get to the back door you have to climb up some steep stairs to get on the back deck and I seriously doubted Taco with his bad hips and arthritis could have navigated the steps.

Anyway, Rainy went ahead of me and I was carrying a new storage tote when I heard his yelling and I heard his say Taco's name. I thought, 'Oh no... he's found the body...' But then Rainy cried, "He's alive!" And I ran to the little trailer.

There in the back bedroom, in the middle of a bunch of trash and junk, lay Taco. He looked like a little brown skeleton but he seemed alert. Sierra was struck utterly silent when I carried him back. She just took him and cried.

Of course we fed him and gave him water and aspirin because he's crying and can barely move. He doesn't look right, his eyes are glazed and his tongue is still swollen. But he's alive. Incredibly. After more than a week. Without food or water. How is this even possible? And how did we miss seeing him if he's been in the little trailer this long? And how did he survive when a couple nights the temps dipped below freezing?

I don't know. I don't know how he's still alive. I keep looking at him and it doesn't even feel real that he's here home with us. I had given up. I had given up completely. Why didn't I keep checking? I stopped checking last Monday. Has he been trapped in the little trailer, hearing our voices, knowing we were so close and unable to get to us? Why didn't I keep looking?

But he's here and he's alive. How did he survive without at least water for nine days? I can't believe he's alive.