Missing Mimi

As you may or may not have noticed, Mimi is missing from our photo lineup on the right of this page. That is because she is no longer with our family. Wait. Let me rephrase. She doesn't live with us anymore but we will always claim her as an honorary member of our family even though she lives with her new family now.

During our preparations to move to Suriname we tried long and hard to find a way to bring Mimi with us. One airline wouldn't allow pets in the cargo area if it got too cold, the other wouldn't allow pets in the cabin period, and even if we hassled with all of that there was a 50/50 chance she'd be quarantined in Trinidad and Tobago. The only other option was to pay nearly $2K to get her here and as much as we wanted to bring her we just couldn't justify the price. So, we put some feelers out to see if we could find her a new family who would love her as much as we did.

We were blessed to find a wonderful family who came highly recommended (they used to be members of our ward in Virginia) but they had moved out of the state and lived a couple hours away. Despite the fact that we were moving out of the country in less than two weeks we felt like we owed it to Mimi to make the drive to deliver Mimi to her new home. So we did.

Apparently Mimi wanted to go out with a bang so she both pooped and thew up in the car during the drive. Nice.

We spent a little time with Mimi's new family and Andrea (the mom) was kind enough to take one last picture of all of us together. Then we said farewell to our sweet kitty and headed home.

It's been a hard adjustment not having Mimi around anymore. Charlie still prays for her every night when he's praying for the rest of our family. He always asks about her and wants to get things for her. When he saw these pictures he said, "I wish Mimi was here with us."

On the drive to Mimi's new house.

When we got all of our belongings here in Suriname we found that we still had quite a few of Mimi's belongings (they'd been in storage for a year). Seeing her stuff just reminded us what a void we have in our home. No Mimi sleeping on our bed at night or insisting on coming in the bathroom with us. No Mimi to chase all the lizards and bugs we keep finding. No Mimi to pet and love whenever we sit down for thirty seconds. No Mimi for Millie to chase now that she can run.

Last family picture.

We know Mimi is being loved and well taken care of, but that doesn't make us miss her any less. After this we've decided we're done with pets until our mobile lifestyle is over and we're in our own home. It's just too hard saying goodbye. We miss you Mimi and we'll always love you!