I regret to inform you

Of late our family has been facing a lot of stress, with my surgery and hospitalization and the poor cat's illness. We've also been weathering another loss, a rather cataclysmic one I've been avoiding writing about. I realize this blog has been rather depressing of late, but yet I feel the readers would want to know:

I regret to inform you of the passing of Cupy and his entire family, which had grown to number six or seven, save for one, rather indistinct Cupy offspring, which was enigmatically spared from the holocaust. When I came home from the hospital, on one of my first outings to the dining room I happened to look over at the built-in cabinet and noticed that Cupy and nearly all his family were missing. With everything else going on, Lola did not realize her loss until days after I saw it, and by that time, it was too late to search the garbage for the Cupys.

The suspects in this mass murder are two: my mother-in-law, who very kindly flew to San Francisco and stayed with the children while I was in the hospital, and our very nice housecleaner, who's been coming once a week while I'm recovering. The Sober Husband feels strongly that his mother would never, ever harm a beloved slurpee cup with a post-it note on it reading "Cupy", but on the other hand, why would our housecleaner, who has cleaned around the Cupy family for over a year, suddenly decide that all Cupys must die?

The survivor remains nameless, but a companion for him was purchased at the 7-11 yesterday.