Apparently, Flake is not coming back.

It has been weeks now since the gray calico with which I share a birthday went missing. My parents both agree that the day before their aging feline disappeared, she showed signs something wasn’t quite right.

That’s what animals do, I assured them, just before they . . . they . . . (go off to die). My parents nod and insist she is not to be replaced.

We talk about the day Flake, one of five born to my family’s Beulah, was delivered under an azalea in our front flower bed. In due time, it was the calico’s good fortune to be my parents’ pick of the litter. None but that one would manage to space out its nine lives for more than a decade.

And unlike other cats that have since snoozed on our porch swing (and there have been a few), Flake had a birthdate we could remember. We were able to do this not only because it was mine, but because it was historical: the invasion of Iraq.

The cat outlived that war. In fact, she outlived and lived through quite a lot over the course of 11 years – the end of Bin Laden and the beginning of Obamacare, Michael Phelps piling up 22 Olympic medals, gas prices rising above $3 for the first time ever.

Yes, while Flake met my dad at the barn door each morning, massacres happened at Virginia Tech and Sandy Hook Elementary. As she spent her days enjoying a steady diet of Whiskas, Terri Schiavo brought the euthanasia battle to the forefront of America’s conscience. And while she sunned on the garage steps blissfully unaware, a gadget called an iPhone, now eight generations strong, was released.

Her years saw Angry Birds arrive on the scene, along with a strain of Swine Flu. Mark McGwire and Lance Armstrong admitted they broke the rules. General Motors became Government Motors. A Royal couple wed. Toy Story 3 made us cry.

For a cat who preferred to sleep on top of an RV while the winds of Hurricanes Katrina and Isaac whipped through her territory, social media terms like “unfriend” and “hashtag”, of course, meant nothing, even though they were added to the New Oxford American Dictionary. She could also care less that other words like Taliban and Shiite and jihad had become part of our everyday vocabulary.

True to her nature, Flake lived out her days curled up on a pillow, ears alert for the sound of an errant dog, limbs always on the stretch. She sometimes, but not often, would open her cat-eye slits and spy on her masters through the front porch window. As they watched 11 years’ worth of current events unfold on the screen before them, she yawned. Slept. Licked. Curiosity, after all, is known to kill cats.

The world spun – leaving us spinning in its wake – during a cat’s lifespan. Who knows what will come in the year ahead to dizzy us even more? 2015 is a woman in labor, and what she will deliver is a mystery: war or peace, more ethical dilemmas, surprising admissions, new gadgets? In any case, we can be sure that there is nothing new under the sun (Ecclesiastes 1:9) and that there is One who is working everything out to its proper end (Proverbs 16:4) – Him in whom all things hold together (Colossians 1:17).

Blessings on your new year.

Wesson resident Kim Henderson is a freelance writer who writes for The Daily Leader. Contact her at kimhenderson319@gmail.com.