A Special Little Guy Named TJ
We Were Lucky to Have Him
When our wonderful little kitty, TJ, died, he was almost 18 years old. We got him on a trip to Missouri to visit family. He was a pathetic little farm kitten who was hanging around, and my wife wanted to take him home, of course. I did not want to share a car with a farm kitten for the next 1600 miles. We decided to take a vote and I lost, one to one. So, we took him home. It didn’t take long to realize we made the right decision. He was such a little sweetheart right from the start, and he was accepted as part of the family rather quickly. TJ had a way about him, like the other cats knew he was not a threat, but he was not to be pushed around, either.
He was always lean, lithe, and athletic, never weighing more than 8 or 9 pounds. He was able to get into places you would think were not possible. One time, after a heavy rain, we discovered a leak in our roof that had come through the ceiling in our closet. We had the roof repaired, but I thought I could repair the closet ceiling myself. This took a few weeks, and when I wasn’t working on it, I taped a piece of sheet plastic over the big ceiling hole, mainly to keep anything that happened to be living in our attic, out of the closet. A couple of days later, we went out for a while and came back, did a cat count, and we discovered that TJ was missing. We looked all over the house, multiple times. TJ was nowhere to be found. Then I looked in our closet, for the third or fourth time, and I finally noticed that a small area of plastic sheeting had come unstuck. I thought, “No, he couldn’t have . . .”, but, to be sure, since we hadn’t found him anywhere else, I got the ladder and a flashlight, and stuck my head through the attic access in the laundry room. Sure enough, I saw two big eyes staring back at me. It was TJ, having a good old time exploring the attic. Somehow, he had made his way to the top shelf in the closet and peeled back the plastic just enough to go on an adventure. Of course, being a cat and all, he would not come to me when I called him, so I had to clamber up in there and retrieve him. I was too relieved to be mad at him. And looking back, it’s actually kind of humorous. In TJ’s mind, I’m sure he was just having fun.
Gradually, we began to think of him as sort of a feline comedian. He just seemed to seek out the silly. I remember an incident in the middle of the night, when I was awakened by an unusual sound, kind of a ploop, ploop, ploop sound that seemed very close to me. I turned to see TJ standing on my wife’s chest as she slept, pawing at her lower lip. That’s right, he was doing lip diddles with her lip! You know, lip diddles, as in when you repeatedly flick your lower lip out with your finger and it makes a funny sound. Lip diddles! I will always believe he did that for the pure joy of it. Maybe he did it at first because he wanted her to get up and get him a snack, but it sure seemed like he was amusing himself to me. And, my wife? As I recall, she slept right through it! At least until I woke her up.
Closely related to lip diddles was “getting the paw”. Oftentimes if he wanted something, he would paw at your face, patiently and gently, to get your attention. We called it “getting the paw” like, “TJ gave me the paw, so I had to get up.”
He developed a special relationship with Baby, our other Missouri farm kitty. Baby was 3 years older than TJ, and his place in the family was well established by the time TJ came along. Baby usually did not take kindly to newcomers, but TJ and he eventually became fast friends. They often slept together during the day. They would be all mashed up against one another, looking like a pile of black and grey cat parts. When Baby died, we think that greatly affected TJ. They had been pals for almost 18 years and now Baby was gone. We think TJ lost some of his spark after that. He was old by that time, so maybe the aging process was taking its toll, but we think he missed his buddy, and the loss of Baby may have accelerated his decline. We will never know for sure.
TJ was a sweet, special little guy. We loved him very much. Our home has not been the same without him.
