My Thanksgiving Cat

 

This is my cat. His name is Tiger, and he was the best pet I ever had. We got him and his sister, Parsley (the Calico in the third photo), from a street vendor in Taegu, Korea in November 1993. They were both kittens, about two months old, underfed and tiny. We were told that in that particular market, cats were sold not as pets but rather as raw ingredients for shaman medicine, and that would have been our cats' fate. They were both scared of people when we bought them, but as we rode home in the taxi with the kittens in a cardboard box, Tiger put himself above Parsley to protect her. Over the next 18 years, Tiger traveled all over the world with us. He lived in Korea, Chile, Venezuela, Spain, the Czech Republic and the U.S. Every time we had him in a cat carrier or a cage, he made the most tremendously loud meow ever heard by mankind. When we took him to airports, people dozens of gates away would look our way at the loud mournful meowing. When we carried him to the vet, people driving in cars would stop because they had heard him yowling. The first time we took him and Parsley on an airplane, they flew cargo, and we had been told there was a pressure problem with the cargo area. When we saw their cages sitting by the luggage area, it was as quiet as could be, and we feared the worst. But then he must have heard our voices, because suddenly he let loose an ear-piercing meow that echoed throughout the terminal.

He was, I confess, not the smartest cat in world history. He had a very hard skull, and he seemed to think that if he rammed his head against doors, they would eventually open, even the doors that opened inward. He could keep banging his head against closet doors for an hour with no letup.

When we lived in Chile, Tiger would perch in a tree outside our house. I rode the bus home from work, and when I rounded the street corner two blocks from our house, I would hear this very loud meow, then a thump, then a vibrating, woo-ah-woo-ah-woo meow as he came running toward me still meowing. And then he would bump his head against my leg and walk home with me. He was never really a lap cat; he couldn't figure out how he was supposed to sit in someone's lap. But he would crawl halfway onto your lap and stay there as long as you would let him, periodically bonking his head against your hand to remind you to pet him. As you can tell from his photo, Tiger was a Japanese Manx. He had the most amazingly powerful back legs. He could jump, quite literally, eight feet straight up onto the roof of a pool shed we had in our back yard, and even as a very old cat he never lost his ability to easily jump straight up onto beds and other furniture. He loved to sleep in the sun, and he loved to be near people. 

Tiger was loyal, affectionate, sweet and kind. When we went to Afghanistan, we couldn't take him with us. Parsley had died a month before we left Prague, so he was the only cat we had left. My parents agreed to take care of Tiger for us, and after we came back, he was even older and more frail, and I was afraid to bring him to Panama. My parents are the kindest people on earth, and so they took Tiger in for good, fully knowing that it was a matter of time and that I would not see him again. I think they fell in love with him, even in that short time, just as much as we loved him for nearly two decades.  We dragged him all around the world for 17 years; for his last year and a half, he could rest, and he found a new, final home.

Tiger came to us on Thanksgiving 1993, and he left us, dying the day before Thanksgiving 2011. But for 18 years, he was my little boy. And I will never have a Thanksgiving again when I don't think of him, and be very thankful for the time we had with him.