“Open it, quick,” my teenage daughter urged me, thrusting an unwrapped brown box into my hands. Her sister looked over her shoulder giggling. I already knew what he box held. I could hear the soft meows coming from inside. I pulled the flaps open and scooped out a tiny kitten that glared at me and bared milk-white teeth. “Happy Mother’s Day,” my daughters sang.
My husband Norman, sitting in his favorite easy chair, shook his head and
groaned. He didn’t much care for cats. Besides, I’d had cats before and he knew
how losing them broke my heart.
It was too late. I’d already fallen in love. With his dark gray striped fur, tufted ears and brilliant yellow eyes, the kitten resembled a miniature bobcat.
This, I thought, is one feisty little cat. I named him Tiger.
We lived on the third floor of an apartment block in a small town, and, for the
first two years of his life, Tiger’s only experience with the out-of-doors was
the balcony where he sat for hours each day watching the world pass by beneath
him.
The next year, when my father passed away, we moved to my mother’s home to help
her through her grief. She had a large fenced yard and, for the first time, we
could let Tiger experience the outdoors. The first time Tiger set foot outside,
the grass mystified him. He tippy toed across the lawn like a ballerina dancing
across the stage; then he raced for the house. With a snort of laughter, Norman
opened the door for the cat who was rushing into the house to use the only
bathroom he’d ever known – his litter box.
In September, autumn came, a northern Alberta autumn with heavy frost. The first morning when the temperature dropped well below freezing, Tiger rushed outdoors to use his new bathroom in the flower bed. The nice soft dirt he had been accustomed to was now hard and unyielding and he finally gave up and returned to his litter box, looking quite put out by the whole thing. He continued to use the “indoor plumbing” until the snow came. He didn’t seem to mind the cold white stuff a bit. In fact, he was happy because once again he had somewhere to dig holes for his daily toilet duties.
In 1990 we bought a camper and moved to Angling Lake for the summer. The wild
bush behind our camper was the haunt of coyotes, cougars and the occasional
wolf. Muskrats sometimes left the lake to explore the weeds and skunks,
notorious cat killers, abounded. I was a bit worried that we might lose Tiger
and suggested we leave him with one of the kids.
My husband would have none of it. “Tiger comes with us,” he said. “He can look
after himself.”
My worries were unfounded. Tiger chased birds and squirrels, sat in the sun and
purred, and never strayed too far from the safety of the camper and yard.
This was ranch country, and many ranchers owned dogs, big mongrel animals
accustomed to being kings of their domain. These people became our friends and often rode in on their horses, dogs following close behind.
Tiger, with his brazen manner, fluffed up, and hissing and spitting, didn’t hesitate to let those dogs know that they were now in his domain. Here Tiger was king. To our surprise, and that of the ranchers, Tiger intimidated even the largest, fiercest dogs in the neighborhood.
“Stupid cat,” Norman said. “Going to get himself killed.” But I detected a note
of pride in his voice.
One night we were awakened by a loud ruckus outside. Tiger was howling and
spitting, and then we heard a thud against the bottom of the camper. After a few
seconds of silence, we could hear Tiger wailing and his voice became fainter and
fainter.
Norman and I rushed outdoors where a full moon illuminated the countryside.
There, on the hill behind our camper, stood a red fox with Tiger in his jaws. My husband got his rifle. Afraid he might hit Tiger, he fired over the fox’s head. The animal dropped our cat and loped off over the hill.
Tiger lay unmoving. Feeling certain that my cat had chosen the wrong foe this
time and was either dead or injured, fear and sorrow flooded my mind. Then Tiger
staggered to his feet, and, with head and tail held high, stalked back to the
trailer.
“Too dumb to know a fox from a dog,” Norman said as he picked Tiger up and ran
gentle hands over the cat’s body, looking for injuries.
Tiger spent the next couple of years moving back and forth with us between our
summer home and our townhouse. It became obvious, though, that he now found town
life boring. For that matter, so did we, so we bought a cabin at the lake and
moved there to live year round.
Ice fishing was a big part of Norman’s life, and one wintry day Tiger tried to follow my husband out to his fishing shack. Someone else had drilled a hole in the ice and Tiger, claws scrambling uselessly at the slippery surface of the lake, slid into the hole and splashed into the freezing cold water. When my husband brought him in shivering and dripping, I grabbed a towel and rubbed him dry him. He must have been numb, and as the warmth brought the feeling back into his body, he yowled and began to run back and forth across the cabin floor meowing, obviously in pain.
Norman shook his head. “Too dumb to see a hole in the ice,” he said, but he was
the one who held Tiger that evening and stroked his soft fur until he purred.
Over the years I saw a growing attachment between my husband and the cat.
They were always together. When Norman went out in the boat, Tiger sat on the
dock and watched for his return. Both cat and man loved fish. When Norman
filleted his catch Tiger stood on his hind feet, front paws resting on the side
of the table, awaiting his share. The cat even rode to the dump when Norman
took the garbage out each week.
Norman suffered a serious heart attack in 1995 and could no longer work. I
found a job in town, but the half-hour drive back and forth morning and night
made for a very long workday. I suggested we move back to town, but Norman loved
the country and his hours out on the lake fishing.
Winter, driving on icy, drifted roads, often in darkness, became too risky. After
a few weeks of soul searching and a couple of near accidents, I finally rented
an apartment in town and only went out to the lake for weekends.
“I’ll be fine,” Norman said. “I’m not alone. I have Tiger.” The cat now slept
at the foot of his bed at night and followed him everywhere.
Norman’s health began to worsen, but still he refused to return to town. He
suffered from a heart condition, sleep apnea and diabetes and became depressed
and moody. His illnesses made him so irritable that I stopped spending all my
weekends at the cabin.
“Don’t waste your time coming out here every weekend,” he finally told me. “I
don’t need to be babied.”
Although his harsh words hurt, I knew he hated my seeing him ill. Because of the
sleep apnea he often had to fight to stay awake long enough to carry on a
conversation. It was obvious he preferred to be alone and really didn’t want me
there. He knew he was ill. And he worried, not about himself, but about Tiger.
“I hope the cat goes before I do,” he told me one day. “Who’ll look after him if
I’m not there?”
We knew after all this time at the lake, the cat would find it hard to adjust to
town life with rumbling traffic and little room to wander. We didn’t think tiger
would be able to survive in town and there was no one near enough to the cabin
to take over his care.
Then one evening, Norman phoned me and said, “Tiger never came in for his supper
tonight.”
It was early March, with a hint of spring in the air, so I told him not to
worry. Tiger was probably just out hunting or exploring the lakeshore somewhere
and would be home and hungry in the morning.
The next morning, Norman phoned again and I could hear tears in his voice. He’d
found Tiger asleep under his truck. Only the cat wasn’t asleep. He was dead.
There wasn’t a mark on him. Nor did he show signs of illness. He was just an old
cat and his time had come. I drove out to the lake that evening and we buried
Tiger behind the cabin under the old maple tree he had loved to climb. For the
first time in far too long, my husband and I held each other, and we both cried.
A week later, sometime in the night, my husband passed away. I like to think
that Tiger had gone first to free my husband to leave this world knowing that
his old friend wouldn’t suffer. I like to imagine them together now in the Great
Beyond, just two old friends whose time had come.
