As promised, I will begin with the first of the “Cat Daddy” entries. However, when Onyx discovered that I was writing about him – which I thought would make him happy – he immediately demanded that he be allowed to tell at least part of it himself. He didn’t care one bit that I had just spent several years earning a degree, so I could be a better writer, and he had very little formal training. Oh, he can use a keyboard. He can type. He hasn’t quite grasped using spell-check though. Sometimes his words look like, “nnnnoirnlkldcnjjjjjlllldddssmeowwwww,” which requires translation. He agreed to let me at least open the series because he was pretty young when he showed up and didn’t have as clear a memory about that time as I had. I could tell that this would be a fight to the finish.

We had only been home from Bangladesh for maybe five weeks and were still getting the house in order and getting everything unpacked and situated. Stacy (my lovely bride), had the first week of school behind her and was in her second week. While she was at work, I continued to work around the house.

I noted that I needed to get the patio furniture out of the shed and put it out on our patio, so I grabbed a push broom and began to sweep the patio first. I was about halfway finished, when – out of the corner of my eye (do eyes really have corners?) I saw something dark leap up onto the side of the patio. It was a small black cat, and it was approaching me in a very aggressive manner. My first instinct was to kick this creature into the clouds, but I realized that it was small and young – maybe six months old, so I held my ground. It slammed on the brakes when it reached me and started crying.

“Oh no. You can’t stay here!” I said and did my best to ignore the little cat. It was skinny, a little matted, and there was a strip of hair missing from its tail, as if a dog or something might have gotten a little too close in the chase. It looked like it had been dining on lizards and bugs for at least a week. I moved around to sweep the front porch, hoping it wouldn’t follow me. There was no chance of that happening. I went in and got him a small bowl of water, but he smelled of it and began crying again. Against my better judgment, I went in and got him a small bit of cream in a bowl, which he gulped down.

It was about that time that Stacy called and I warned her about the growing kitten which was now camped on the porch. Her first response was, “Don’t feed him anything – we’ll never get rid of him.” I assured her that I hadn’t and felt bad saying it, because he was so skinny. I could see that it wasn’t going anywhere as long as I was outside, which was an excellent excuse for a break from the stifling August heat. I’d do something inside until he moved on, then finish outside chores. I got busy inside and before I knew it, Stacy was pulling into the drive. I went out on the porch and didn’t see the little cat anywhere, but when Stacy got to the porch, it ran out from under my truck.

“Oh! That poor thing is starving! We have to get it something,” was Stacy’s instant response. I agreed despite the irony, but I knew that Stacy wanted a dog too: we had discussed it either days or weeks before the cat’s appearance. I felt there was no danger of Stacy wanting to keep the little cat. Neither one of us disliked cats – we just liked dogs more. Very few years of my life have been spent without a dog – at least one. In any case, we weren’t going to let the poor little cat starve. I went to the store and got a can of cat food, which it refused, so we found something that it liked that wasn’t cat food.

The next days were somewhat of a blur. I think that was when we discovered how full our local animal shelter is, so we decided to keep him.

That was mid-August, 2022. Today is February 6, 2024.

Stay tuned for part 2, where we discuss the level of (or lack of) humility necessary to accept the title of Cat Daddy.