Milk Chocolate: Memories of Tiger

A few weeks ago, my 18 year old cat, named Tiger, died. I wrote a post last week about his last couple of days and how I said goodbye. This post you are now reading is about as many happy memories as I can think of about Tiger's 18 years with my family.

For as long as I can remember I always wanted a cat. My parents said no at first because we lived in an apartment, but when we got a house, my begging increased. A year after we moved into our house I turned 8 years old and got baptized. In fact, I got baptized on October 31st - Halloween. At the family party afterwards, my parents gave me a giant present to open. I opened up a litter box, food and water bowls, and this picture:

The funny thing is, that is not Tiger. That's his sister. My mom picked out the girl kitten, and the one she walked away with was Tiger. It was meant to be. :) We had to wait until November to bring him home because he wasn't old enough to leave his mom yet.

When Tiger was a kitten, and before we got him declawed, he would climb up my mom's pants and hang on her bum if she was standing. If she was sitting down, he would get all the way up to her shoulder and sit there like a parrot.

We were told to keep him inside our home for a year before letting him in the backyard. That would help him know this was his home, and he would come back if he ever got out. When the year was up we wold take him outside and he would run back in as fast as he could! So we turned it into a game. My dad, my brother and I would take Tiger out to the sidewalk in front of the house and say, "On your mark, get set, go!" We would let go of Tiger and all of us would race to the front door. Tiger won every time.

Around the same time, we moved Tiger's litter box from the laundry room to the garage. My dad installed a small doggy door so Tiger could go from the house to the garage and vice versa without us opening the door for him. He was, of course, scared of the doggy door at first. So we would push him through the flap to the garage and he would immediately run back through into the house and all the way to my mom's bathroom where she was getting ready for the day, and he would hide behind her legs. We would start over and it continued that way until he learned to go through on his own.

When I was in third grade, I entered the photography section of Reflections with a collage of photos of Tiger. I don't remember what the theme that year was, but I made Tiger fit into the theme. My collage received an honorable mention. These are some of the photos I used in it:

At Christmas time Tiger liked to climb our Christmas tree - he didn't have claws and it wasn't a real tree, so he would literally balance on the branches. One year I didn't notice him in the tree, and as I was walking by he leaped out at me and the tree came with him! I screamed and caught both Tiger and the tree.

Also at Christmas time we would get a stocking for cats from Pet's Mart. My mom would put it out Christmas Eve with the rest of our stockings, but she wouldn't open it until morning. So, we would wake up Christmas morning and find Tiger's stocking somewhere on the floor with teeth marks in it. During the night he had tried to get it open to get to his toys. Then we would open it and dump his toys out and he would go crazy!

Tiger had his favorite spots to lay around the house. At night, when he wasn't prowling and playing, he would sleep on my bed. He would either lay up near my head - a few times even maneauvering my head off of my pillow! - or he would lay near my feet. When my feet got cold I would stick them under his body and he would warm them up. When he was feeling playful at night he would attack my feet and my hands if I dangled them off my bed. He would jump up through my sheets to get to them, it was so funny.

During the day he had four favorite spots: the top of the love seat in the living room (so he could look out the window), where the hallway and entryway meet (he would lay half on the carpet and half on the tile), the top of my parents' head board, and under my bed.

It wouldn't be a post about Tiger without mentioning this memory, which comes from my friend Lindsey:

Lindsey and I were having a sleepover, and in the middle of the night I woke up to Lindsey tapping me on the shoulder. "Chelsey," she said, "Tiger took my pillow and I can't get it back." Sure enough, Tiger had her pillow in his mouth, and every time she tried to take it back he would run away from her with her pillow. So I chased him down and got her pillow back for her.

During this whole time, Tiger was getting weekly baths. That was one of the conditions I agreed to in getting a cat: that I would bathe him every week. He never grew to love his baths, but he did learn to tolerate them, and eventually stopped trying to jump out of the tub. We would lay out several towels right next to the tub and when the water was drained we would let go of him, and he would leap out onto the towels and we would dry him.

In the fall of 2007, Tiger became an outdoor cat. He had started marking his territory too often in the house - as male cats get older they get more territorial - my dad had had enough and kicked him out into the backyard. In order for me to be remotely okay with this, my dad bought a giant dog house, put a rug and Tiger's bed inside of it, and we bought a heater that blew into the opening at night during the winter.

Tiger liked to sit on top of the roof of his house and look around the backyard. We called the roof of his house, "Pride Rock" and my dad would say, "Oh, Tiger is surveying his kingdom." He liked to lay next to my mom when she would work in the garden during the summer. And usually anytime anyone would open the back door he would come running to great us. Even if we opened the side door to take the garbage out, he would be there to say hi.

When Benjamin, and later Luna, entered the family and got old enough to play in the backyard, they became very interested in Tiger, and in turn Tiger became interested in them. Both Benjamin and Luna had to learn to be soft with Tiger, they would get too excited and hit him instead of petting him. They would get in trouble, and cry, but they both quickly learned to pet softly. Benjamin really liked to help feed Tiger, and then he would sit next to Tiger's food bowl and watch Tiger eat. Whenever Benjamin played in the backyard the first thing he would do was look in Tiger's house to make sure he was there.

Luna was scared of Tiger at first. We would put her on a blanket on the grass and Tiger would come over and sniff her and she would scream and cry and try to crawl away. When she felt brave enough to touch him, she wanted to be in my mom's arms to do so. She would lean over and barely touch him, then she would scream and crawl up my mom as high as she could go. By the end of this past summer, Luna would walk around with Tiger and pet him and laugh and smile at him. I'm glad that both of my kids fell in love with Tiger just like I did.