Supercat

Our children were young when we were introduced to a kitten. A friend, a truck driver, had driven from a few states away before realizing that an orange tabby had somehow snuck into his trailer. When he saw us interact, he said through a teared eye, “This is what he needs. A family.”

He offered us this cat. We usually made these decisions at the dinner table, but the kids drowned out any discussion with wails of “Pleeeeaaaaase?!?!?!” and “Can we? Can we? Can we?”

This was an easier decision for my partner than for me. I’d always thought of myself as a dog person. I didn’t mind cats. They were fine. But dogs seemed to have a purpose. They barked warnings. They might defend against an intruder. They crapped outside. Cats were fine. They just weren’t dogs.

We adopted the cat and named him Tempe after a small city in Arizona. The name was based on a family joke which I’m not sure if Tempe ever truly understood. Tempe got a lot of exercise with our kids. They quickly found out that he enjoyed play fighting. Though his stinging claws and sharp fangs changed us from a family of t-shirts to a family of long sleeves.

Tempe had all those cat stereotypes one hears about. He would eat what and when he wanted. He would leave his fur all around so we could never forget he was there. He would strut about our home as though he owned it. If he had a checking account, I’d have suggested he help with the mortgage.

For years I really felt that Tempe was, simply, a cat. Sure, he was a great hunter and could swat flies blindfolded. But that was just reflexes, right? He was always standing guard to welcome us home or to greet a guest. But he was just territorial, right? He enjoyed bobbing his head to new wave rock from the 80s. But all cats have a fine appreciation of music, right?

This foolish misunderstanding was explained to me when my partner, with a seriousness usually reserved for a household budget crunch, sat me down on the couch. She took my hands in hers and fixed our eyes. She spoke slowly and softly so that I would catch every word.

“Bob,” she confided. “Tempe… is… a… Supercat.”

And she didn’t mean a small ‘s’ supercat either. Nope. She meant a full scale, extraordinarily magical, possibly from some other dimension or timeline, deserving of his very own theme song, Supercat.

I didn’t quite understand what she meant until, one day, I was ill and in bed. I suffer from bouts of gout. It’s a form of arthritis that swells the joints – toes, ankles and knees mostly. It is very painful and, once I had a major attack, it would put me in bed for a day or more. I resisted taking prescription pills for it because, well, because I didn’t trust Super-Pharma.

I was in bed with a particularly painful gout attack in my left knee when Tempe, without a prompt, hopped up on the bed, strode over to that knee and lay down beside it. I don’t know if it was the warmth of his body, the sight itself, or his quiet purring that helped. But the pain became easy to forget.

From that day on, whenever I was in bed with a gout attack, Tempe would hop up and continue his Supercat medical procedure. It didn’t matter where the gout hit me. Right knee, left knee, right ankle or left, Tempe always knew and would lay exactly there – easing my pain.

This didn’t only happen to me. Whenever my partner ached with migraines or her own form of arthritis, Tempe would act out a similar scene. It was, truly, uncanny.

Tempe was with us longer than most cats would have been. He was in his 20s when he began to slow down, seemed forgetful, sometimes grouchy. For several hours he would hide in dark corners and I knew he wouldn’t be with us forever, as we’d come to hope. I began sleeping near his hidden spots. On the couch. Sometimes the floor. Within ‘meow’ distance, in case he needed some of the same comfort that he’d given us.

He never needed me. But I hope he knew I was there.

One day, I lay down next to where he was hiding. He looked at me, placed his paw by my heart and whispered a quiet meow. His last.

Tempe was a Supercat who took on all the best qualities of our family and the individuals within it. The empathy, the strength, the intelligence, the love. And then, improved on each one of them.

My name is Bob. And I’m a cat person.