Hi Bobert,

My dear cat-friend, a female 13 year old, who was also called Timmy because she was Timid, had to go to cat-heaven a few weeks ago. I miss her terribly, and I do find it easier to cry for her loss than to have a good bawl over my mother's sudden death in April.

I suggest taking kendall's advice: men often think that they should try to find a solution to a woman's problem, but often women just want to express their emotions, fears, thoughts, ideas etc and are not up to the problem solving stage yet. So empathise with P-vine's grief, and try to find out if she feels guilty about Timmy's disappearance. You may be able to provide some helpful insights by sharing the discussion on that point.

My trick for finding my missing cats, when they are going walkabout, is to sit quietly and clamly in a place near where I think they are hiding, and just think about them in a quiet, calm way. You may not believe in this trick, but I have often found that if I am thinking about one of my cats in the regular course of the day they will suddenly decide to come and talk to me.

When they are off on a mission, and I am worrying about them, I calm my fears and worries as much as possible, and just send out loving thoughts to them - like prayer or meditation. Quite often they would come back, with a "Yeah, waddaya want" look on their face, and then wander back off to do whatever they were doing.

If this doesn't sound too much like Hoo-doo Voo-doo to you (grin) then it's worth a try. It helps to calm my fears when I do it, so it has an added benefit as well.

Hope it all turns out for the best.

Helen