I burst into tears the other day showing the sprinkler guy where the cat is buried. He was running new lines in the backyard and I didn’t want him digging the kitty up. “That was a cool cat,” he said. Everyone knew Hawk.
Weighing in at fifteen pounds, kitty wandered into our back yard nine years ago to sleep for hours in the sun. At the end of the day, he would look both ways before crossing the road. In the winter, the temperature plunged to minus sixteen degrees. Rodeo saw him struggling in the snow behind our house and gave him food scraps. A few days later, the cat marched up our shoveled sidewalk crying like a baby. The snow was piled a foot high in the yard. I realized then he was homeless.
My spouse and I both travel for work. We don’t have pets for a reason. It never seemed fair to make an animal endure our constant absence. With the weather so bad and the cat in need, I had no choice but to break from my own rules on pet ownership. I let this tomcat into our house and into my heart. Rodeo was still at work. I gave him fresh water and some canned fish. His fur looked like two long ropey strips down his back. He ate so fast I wondered when he’d had his last meal. His eyes were the color of gold. They reminded me of a bird of prey, so I named him Hawk.
When Rodeo came home that night, Hawk eyed him wearily. The cat was far more suspicious of men than women. As a youngster. I served as a kitty midwife for Maggie, my first cat, who had 82 kittens over ten years. Rodeo had a similar female cat who had multiple litters in the barn when he was a kid. We were cat people. Maybe Hawk sensed that. It took a few days, but he warmed up to both of us. Over the years, he and Rodeo became inseparable.
I waited until spring to clean him up. I cut out the knots down his back and bought him an igloo for the front porch, padding it with blankets. At night, I set out food and water because he liked to patrol the neighborhood like a local sheriff. Every morning, he’d strut inside and head straight to the kitchen cabinet where I kept his brush. He loved our grooming ritual. I would brush his long hair and wipe him down with wet paper towels. He began to groom himself again and his coat got silky.
Hawk followed us around the house like a dog. When we did yoga, he spread out on the mat with us. At dinnertime, he’d plant himself in the middle of the kitchen floor. He liked to taste what we were eating and enjoyed a variety of foods. Feta cheese was his all-time favorite. When Rodeo hurt himself on a dirt bike, Hawk served as a comfort cat, curling up on daddy’s lap for hours on end. Rodeo, who is normally allergic to cats, discovered that Hawk was hypoallergenic.
The cat was a popular fixture in the community. One youngster told me Hawk would walk her home from school each afternoon and sleep on her bed while she did her homework. An older woman dumped wet cat food on our concrete patio. When I confronted her, she said tersely, “Oreo likes this kind of cat food.” I realized she was talking about Hawk. I asked her where she lived and she gestured across the street. She left in a huff. Hawk finally emerged from his igloo looking a bit sheepish. He seemed relieved to get inside the house. I started calling him Lothario.
At Christmas, Hawk was obsessed with all the presents under the tree. He’d chew every bow he could sink his teeth into. I had to flip all the presents over so he’d stop. I put a red bow tie on him for the holiday. He looked pretty dapper for a former homeless kitty.
We discovered he had kidney failure when he needed an incisor pulled. It was infected and he was in agony. We started him on epigone shots and lactated Ringer (an electrolyte cocktail), keeping him alive for a few more years. The vet regularly lectured Hawk about how lucky he was. By the time kitty died, he was old and so sweet. He passed in his sleep two days before the 4th of July on his favorite rug a few feet from where daddy slept. The last four days of Hawk’s life, Rodeo ran a kitty hospice, holding him for hours on end.
It’s hard to come home from work now. The house is so quiet. We turned the back yard into a bird sanctuary, but it’s not the same. A baby robin recently perched on Hawk’s burial mound and spent an entire afternoon learning how to fly in the yard. Tucked between the peonies and the hostas, Hawk is now buried in his favorite sleeping spot, right in the middle of the action.
Beautiful memories of a handsome giant cat.❤️
What a beautiful tribute to a special friend. My heart goes out to you and Rodeo.