Chapter One: Old Cats
Tubby is our fat, beige, tabby cat. He’s thirteen years old—around seventy-eight in human terms—and carries himself with all the slow, demanding dignity of a feline senior citizen. He’s always been a gentle soul, the kind of cat you can scoop up, cradle like a baby, or swaddle like a burrito without much protest. Tubby doesn’t run from people—he seeks them out. He finds humans with an almost tactical precision, pressing himself into laps, curling up on feet, and leaving trails of his abundantly shedding fur behind him like love letters written in beige.
Tubby is also a master manipulator. He’s the kind of cat who has honed the art of shameless begging to near-professional levels. He chooses his people with intention and answers only to the name he believes is right for him. When he came to live with us, my youngest child was three. We named him Valentino, believing it was the perfect fit. He disagreed. We tried Romeow, Mufasa, and a plain old Kitty, but none were quite right—according to him.
Then one day, I saw him sitting in the yard looking a bit plump. Without thinking, I called, “Hey there, Tubby.” He looked up, locked eyes with me, and marched right over. He has answered to “Tubby” ever since.
Tubby has been the best playmate a child could want. He’s been dressed in doll clothes, paraded around in a stroller, worn as a fuzzy boa, used as a pillow, chauffeured on car rides, and once even played the part of a turkey locked in a plastic Playskool oven. His patience is near saintly—until medicine is involved. Then he turns into a furry wrecking ball with claws. Trying to medicate him takes strength, strategy, and sometimes divine intervention.
He’s been blessed with relatively good health. Outside of routine vet visits, the occasional MRSA outbreak, and his shots, he’s been low maintenance. That changed one Mother’s Day.
That morning, he approached me—loud, insistent, and clearly hungry, even though he had just eaten. As I bent down to pet him, I noticed his face. His right cheek was swollen, and his mouth wouldn’t close properly. He looked like a chipmunk with a jaw full of invisible seeds. I knew a vet trip was in order.
My husband, ever pragmatic (and possibly a little too comfortable with country-style logic), muttered something about a tranquilizer and a shovel. Tubby, who seems to understand English when it matters most, promptly avoided him for the rest of the day.
We suspected MRSA again. The kids took the news hard. My son escaped into his video game. My youngest cried. My eldest suggested a group photo with Tubby “just in case,” which no one—not even the cat—was in the mood for.
At the vet’s office, we braced ourselves for bad news. The vet took one look and said it wasn’t MRSA—it was a dental abscess. A bad one. Surgery was needed. My husband stared at the estimate and grumbled, “Six hundred dollars for an old cat?” I reminded him of all the years of loyalty, entertainment, and quiet comfort this “old cat” had given us, especially the children. He gave me the look—the look—but he conceded.
Six hours later, Tubby came home missing half his whiskers, stitched up and sporting the latest in cone fashion. My husband came home with a frown the size of Texas and a much lighter wallet.
Post-op care was a circus. Tubby hated the antibiotics. I got more medicine on the bathroom mirror than into his mouth. Wrapping a 20-pound squirming cat in a towel while shooting meds into his mouth should count as an Olympic event. I applied warm compresses to his cheek—something he surprisingly enjoyed—and cleaned his cone, the counters, and myself. Feeding him meant kneeling, hand-delivering pâté mixed with antibiotics under the cone rim, and hoping for the best. He ate most of it, then tried to bury the rest under an invisible pile of imaginary dirt. It was his usual review of any subpar menu item.
But he got better. The swelling went down. The stitches dissolved. The cone came off. Tubby returned to the great wilds of the living room, once again master of his favorite sunspots and champion beggar of treats.
He doesn’t roam the neighborhood anymore. He doesn’t hunt birds or chase squirrels like he used to. Now, he naps. He eats. He begs. He sleeps some more. He is fat, old, slow, and walks with a limp. But he is happy. And so am I.
I know his time will come. I’ve made peace with that. And when it does, I will help him cross the bridge with the love and dignity he has always given us. But for now, Tubby still has purpose.
He reminds us—daily—that old cats still matter. That being loved and giving love never stops having value. He is well loved. And that is enough.
