I Reported Don Missing

 

Don has been missing since yesterday morning before dawn, which isn’t unusual, except that he didn’t call Anne McQueen all day and she said she even paged him into the night, and he still did not call her back.  She said in all the years that she has worked for him that he has never failed to call her for such a long period of time.  He’s been real pouty and moody lately and ignoring us when we talk to him, but we never know if we are being snubbed or if he just didn’t hear us.  If it’s not important I just let it slide and don’t ask louder.  We haven’t had a fight, other than the ongoing issue about him not getting keys to the cages and to that end, after he began just cutting holes in the cages to get the cats out, I gave him a set of keys and told him that I didn’t have copies of the bigger cats keys, but that I would make him a set soon.  He doesn’t usually mess with the big cats, so I figured I could postpone him indefinitely on that point and he should have been happy to have keys to all the Servals, Caracals and Lynx.  He appeared justified if not happy.

 

He’s been raising two little Caracal kittens (Elijah was one of them born 8/1/1997) and has seemed to take a great deal of interest and pride in doing so.  He pulled them much too young and I am already raising a very difficult little Bobcat kitten (Catera), so I did not jump in and offer to do his midnight and 3:00 am feedings.  He hasn’t dutifully gotten up for these feedings every night but he does the 7:00 am feeding.  During the day he has made no provisions for the kittens to be fed,  other than allowing every volunteer who asks to feed.  We have never had a cub survive a lot of inexperience and I have been reluctant to get attached to them at all, because I have been so sure that his approach would kill these too.  He began this while I was in Jacksonville.

 

I haven’t written much in a while because things have been going so smoothly for a change.  He has been working on selling the scrap in the yard and having it all hauled off.  He took care of things (with Jamie supervising) while I went away for four days in Jacksonville for the LIOC Conference and no one died or got loose.  He bought my mother a sewing machine and my daughter several wave runners and gave me the pair of Snow Leopards that he knew I’ve thought about for a very long time, although I never said so.  (As a later note; I had put plates up in the house with snow leopards on them and that’s how he knew I was admiring these mystical cats)

 

He’s been pretty reliable in helping with the evening feedings of the adult cats.  He’s acted depressed and not very affectionate, but has been much easier to deal with in the recent past.  Cutting up the cages, over breeding the cats and moving them from nice yards into small cages have been the only “hateful” things he’s done and I’ve just let it slide and then once he had forgotten about the cats, I would put them back where they belong and repair the pens.  I get frustrated because there is always so much work to be done and he has nothing to do except impede progress, but I can’t really get angry with him because I know that he is no longer responsible for his actions.

 

Last Thursday he started complaining, more than usual about his diarrhea, but he was also complaining that he wasn’t getting his vitamins, when I was standing over him and watching him take them, so I did not pay much attention to him.  Saturday he felt good enough to go yard sale-ing and brought home washers, dryers, guns, motor cycles and assorted junk for his impending export to Costa Rica aboard the Iveco.

 

That night he was in and out until midnight or later digging through all of his yard sale goods to pack.  I remember hearing him on the phone with Wendell Williams saying that the signs would be delivered for the 26 lots on Monday morning.  He was testing the microwaves and televisions and moving stuff back and forth between the trucks, trailer