Six days after we lost Tiger, on a Friday, a kitten was brought into my dad's office. A lady that worked under my dad had heard that dad lost a cat, so she surprised him and brought this tiny kitten in a box to the office. She didn't ask him beforehand because the person who had the kitten was going to take him and his litter mates to a river and drown them in a bag. She had become attached to this little kitten and didn't want that to happen to him, so she saved his life and brought him to work. Apparently, a Siamese cat had gotten out and gotten pregnant and had a litter of kittens that weren't Siamese. This kitten was part Siamese. He was tiny and was the runt of the litter. He was only six weeks old.
We hadn't planned on getting a kitten, I didn't know that much on how to take care of kittens and we had planned on adopting an adult cat. My dad brought this little fellow home in a box and this kitten immediately showed us his personality. He was very vocal and bright-eyed. He was a little gray-striped kitten. He was so tiny that we were afraid he'd get lost in the house and might get trapped somewhere, unable to get out. We tried to keep him in a laundry basket, but he kept escaping. We tried putting two laundry baskets together, one on top of the other and stuffed the spaces between them with towels. The kitten sat on the towels and used his weight to push the towels down through the holes between the two laundry baskets and escape. This was one smart kitten. So, we went out to the pet store and got him a small cage to stay in at night. We put a litter box (a foil pan with cat litter in it) and gave him water in little foil pans that you would usually put a baked potato in. We wondered what we should name him. My dad suggested 'Tiger 2' and we liked it, so he became Tiger 2. He became my best friend.
He was very lively and playful. He jumped at anything that moved and he was fast. He was so smart, you could see that right away, in his eyes. His eyes were blue when we first got him, but over time, turned into a beautiful light green which looked stunning with his silvery-gray fur. He had dark gray stripes and as he got older, the stripes faded a bit, but they were always there. He could also be very noisy, he had an unusually loud voice for such a small kitten. My parents said it was the Siamese in him. At night, we would put a blanket over his cage so he would be quiet and go to sleep, but in the morning, he would demand loudly to be let out. I loved playing with him and he loved to play. We had to watch him with his teeth. He loved to bite when he played, but we knew those teeth would not always be that tiny, like little pins. He also liked to climb legs whether they were clad in blue jeans or panty hose. I think he got separated from his mother too early. We had a pink shag bathmat that we'd drape over the side of the bathtub. Tiger would suckle from that bathmat the way a kitten would suckle from his mother. We called the bathmat Tiger's 'pink mother.' Years later, my husband and I took it with us when we moved with Tiger to Fort Worth, Texas.
We took Tiger 2 to the vet and the vet wasn't very impressed with him because he was a runt, but Tiger 2 never was very impressed with that vet either and let him know it under no uncertain terms. Tiger 2 could put up a good fight for such a tiny kitten. I wasn't real impressed with that vet either, I like the vet we have now much, much better, she is so much cleaner. We wanted to give Tiger 2 good care from day one. We got him his shots and we took good care of him from the very beginning. This cat would never be let outside to roam the neighborhood.
I remember when I went to summer camp that year, I was going around camp and showing everyone pictures of Tiger 2. My parents wrote me a letter at camp and told me all that Tiger 2 was up to. When I got back from camp a week later, Tiger had gotten a little bigger. Tiger 2 was helping me to cope with the loss of my first Tiger. We eventually dropped the '2' and started calling him Tiger.
Tiger grew quickly as most kittens do. He outgrew the cage quickly. He became a really beautiful cat. We got him a silver collar with little fake jewels on it and it looked great with his gray fur. He was still very active, playful and kitten-like. He got big enough that we started keeping him in the basement at night like we did our first Tiger. We had a doorway that led to a landing and on one side was the back door and on the other side was the stairs leading to the basement. At night, we would put Tiger behind that door and close it. Tiger figured out how to open that door in a very short time. We would no sooner put him behind that door and he would open it and come back out. This door had a door knob, not one of those handles like you see on many doors nowadays. We had a portable dishwasher that we could roll across the kitchen on wheels and we would use it to block the door so that Tiger couldn't open the door back up when we put him in the basement. We had his litter box and bowls down there. It was a nice, big basement with that comfy sofa, so he had a nice place to hang out. He would still rather be upstairs with us, but at night, he tore around the house and made a racket when my parents were trying to sleep.
Tiger was a lot of fun. He also sassed my mom. That was fun to watch. My mom could be kind of overbearing and a little bossy sometimes. He would get up on the kitchen table, which was not allowed and my mom would say "Tiger, you get down off that table right now!" Tiger would look her in the eyes and give her a great big meow. It sounded like he was saying, "Make me!" She would tell him not to sass and he would meow back. This would go on for a little while until she finally picked him up and put him on the ground and he would still meow at her after he got put on the ground. Tiger was stubborn. He had to get the last 'word' in. My mom said that her kids didn't sass her but our cat did.
As Tiger got older, we had to get him 'fixed.' He was becoming aggressive towards certain strangers that would come to the house. In those days, my mom had groceries delivered to the house, she would phone in what she needed and they would bring them to the house. Tiger did not like the grocery delivery man and would bristle up and hiss when this guy brought the groceries into the house. Little did Tiger know that this delivery guy was also delivering his cat food. Tiger would yowl at the mailman when he came to drop the mail in the mailbox on our front porch. Tiger also did not like the meter reader either and we had to keep the cat out of the way when the meter reader would go into the basement to read the gas meter. Nowadays, it's all computerized, but back then, a person had to read the meter. One day, my mom was at work, my brother and I were at school and my grandmother was at our house. She did not know about Tiger's aggressive tendencies. The meter reader came to the door and grandma let him in. Tiger (who was full-grown by now) puffed up, hissed and chased the guy down the stairs. Then the guy ran back up the stairs with Tiger close on his heels. Grandma held something in front of Tiger so the meter reader could escape. The meter reader left a red tag on the front door saying the meter reader couldn't read the meter today because -there was a list of reasons provided with the last one being a blank line. It read that the meter reader couldn't read the meter because of a "bad cat" which was written in on the last line. I can still remember my grandmother telling me about it when I got home from school. We had to mark the readings on the meter and mail it in. Getting Tiger 'fixed' did keep him from spraying but he always had aggressive tendencies towards certain human visitors he didn't want coming into his territory. He tried the aggression with a neighbor lady who visited us once, but she was experienced with many animals and she talked back to him and he stood down and let her pass.
Tiger had a fascination with running water. He didn't want to touch it but he liked to watch it. He liked to watch the washer fill. Our washer had a window in the lid (it was a top loader) and he would sit on top of the washer and watch it fill. He was also fascinated with the dishwasher. We had a portable dishwasher. The house we were living in was built in the 1950's and didn't come with a dishwasher. Even in the 1960's, a dishwasher was a rare thing. When my mother developed an allergy to dish detergent, her doctor said that dad would have to wash the dishes. Dad went out and bought a dishwasher. It was a Kitchenaid, it loaded from the top. We had a large, square kitchen and kept the dishwasher against the back wall until it was time to load it and hook it up to the sink. Tiger liked to catch a ride on it, so he would jump up on top of the dishwasher and one of us would roll it over to the sink. Then we'd load the dishwasher and hook it up to the faucet. There were two hoses attached to a big nozzle that would hook up to the faucet. Fresh water would run through one hose and used water would run through the other. When the dishwasher went through the rinse cycle, a large jet of water would spew out of this nozzle into the sink. Tiger loved to watch that. He would sit up on the dishwasher and wait for the rinse cycle, then he would watch the water spew out. After that, the dishwasher would go into the drying cycle and the lid got warm, so Tiger would sometimes curl up on top of the dishwasher until it got too warm.
Mom standing next to that old dishwasher that Tiger liked. Mom would have a fit if she thought this picture was up here, she didn't like the expression on her face in the photo.
Tiger was beautiful, smart and a lot of fun. He followed me around everywhere in the house and we bonded. He liked to hang out with me in my room, or in the basement, where I did my homework and studying. We had a long hallway in that house where the bedrooms were and Tiger loved to take off and run like a wild cat down that hallway. At the end of the hallway was the bathroom and Tiger would run down the hallway and then slide down the slanted part of the end of the bathtub. One day mom was drawing a bath for my brother when Tiger took off down the hallway, slid down the back of the bathtub and landed in the water. Fortunately it wasn't very full and my mom was there. She and I caught Tiger and had to dry him off. I don't think he did the sliding into the bathtub thing after that.
Tiger could be very sneaky too. My mom and dad would leave for work early and take my brother to my grandma's where he would walk to school from there. I would be at home until the school bus came for me later. Every week day, my mom would call home from work, probably to make sure I was up. I would usually be fixing my lunch for school when she called. In the kitchen, we had an old wall phone with a very short cord. The cordless phones hadn't come out yet. One day, I was making a dried beef sandwich and had just laid the dried beef on the bread when she called. I answered the phone and the cord would not reach the counter where I had been making the sandwich. Suddenly, Tiger jumped up on the counter, took the dried beef off of my sandwich, got back on the floor and ate it very quickly. I was impressed with how he figured the whole thing out. I would usually give him treats of dried beef when I was making a sandwich but that day, he helped himself. It was very salty and I couldn't give him much, but he loved the stuff.
There was another time, after we had moved to Gahanna, Ohio, that my brother was on TV, on the news. It was something to do with the training school he was in and his job and how they are able to accommodate disabled people. It came on the evening news around 6 PM just as we were about to sit down to dinner. There was a hunk of corned beef sitting at dad's place, he was about to serve it up to the family. We all went into the family room to see my brother on TV. Tiger got on the table and took the corned beef right off of the table and started chowing down. I forget who caught him, but he got in big trouble for that and had to spend some time in the basement. That was his 'time out.'
My mom had a friend at work who really, really loved cats. She had several cats at home and these cats really had it made, she took the best care of them, like they were her kids. She was a kind, sweet lady and I remember she sent me a beautiful card when we lost our first Tiger. Mom invited her over to our house one day. It was during the holidays and our Christmas tree was up. When this nice lady came over, Tiger knew right away that she seriously loved cats and really liked him. He took an instant liking to her. He showed off and went on a wild tear around the house. At one point he got into the Christmas tree and shot out of the middle of it. Of course this lady loved Tiger's antics. Tiger was always wary of strangers, but he knew she was no stranger and knew what a nice lady she was. There was another time, after we had moved to our house in Gahanna, Ohio, that my mom had friends over who didn't really like cats, they were 'dog people.' Tiger was all over them, getting on their laps, rubbing against their legs and stuff like that. They were nice about it, but didn't go out of their way to pet him or anything, My mom had me put Tiger in the basement so they wouldn't be so uncomfortable, but I still thought that was amusing.
It wasn't long after Tiger had grown up, that another really pretty brown tabby started hanging out at our house. My mom said not to feed it because he'll start hanging around the house. I had already been feeding him treats. Tiger did not like seeing this strange cat show up at the door but he didn't feel threatened by him.Tiger was about to get a roommate.
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