Tiger was born on August 3, 1992. My friend's sister had a black and white cat, Mischief, who was pregnant, and we narrowed down the father to a black cat nearby, Kazoo. On August 3, she gave birth to a litter of five kittens. There were three black and white kittens, one grey one, and a tabby. I saw them the next day, August 4. She'd given birth out in the garage, and hidden them away, but we were able to get them all out and put them in a box. They were just tiny little things with their eyes still closed. I visited them nearly every day, and when their eyes did open, they were all such a bright blue.

We had wanted a pet for a while, but my parents weren't behind the idea. However, we had been having mice trouble in our new house, where we'd been living for a year. So when these kittens were born, our parents agreed we could have one (after Shanda even put it in writing that she would go without food in order to buy food for the cat, if it came to that). So my sisters and I went to see the kittens to pick one out. I already had a favourite - the little grey one, who had been named Fievel. But my sisters preferred the tabby, and I was overruled. My friend had figured out the sexes of the kittens, and told us the tabby was a girl, after they'd already given it the name of Tiger. So at four weeks old, Tiger came home with us.

At the time, Shanda and I shared a room upstairs. But the stairs were too big for such a little kitten, so we set up a food and litter area in the kitchen on the main floor, and only brought Tiger upstairs at night to sleep. We know now that 4 weeks was a little young to separate a kitten from its mother, but Tiger had no trouble figuring out the litter. We created a birth certificate, with the full name of Tiger Fluffinutter McInnis, Fluffinutter being from a book Shanda had read recently. Sometimes I'd use Tigress instead, figuring it was more suited to a girl.

At six months, we took the first trip to the vet, for shots and to get her fixed. That was when we were informed that, while the vet was happy to fix him, Tiger was most certainly a boy. Oops! Luckily we already had a good boy's name for him. Shanda soon moved out of our shared room to a room in the basement, and I brought Tiger's food and litter up to my room. I wanted him to sleep in the room with me, but I liked having the door closed when I went to sleep. Tiger had other ideas. I had a 4-foot tall dresser beside the door, and he would jump on it and systematically knock everything off it until I would get out of bed in frustration and open the door for him. Of course, eventually I figured out that if I didn't keep anything on top of the dresser, he wouldn't have anything to knock off. So he started pawing at the door handle instead, which was the same height as the dresser. At first, the noise annoyed me enough that I would get up and open it. Then I decided to just ignore him. Which is when he somehow figured out that if he laid down on his side, grabbed the door handle with both paws, turned it and pulled the door, he could open it himself. And I was never able to shut him in that room again.

My parents had agreed to getting the cat to help with the mouse problem, and Tiger turned out to be a great mouser. A little too good, sometimes. He often hunted in the trees across the street from our house, and on more than one occasion brought back little gifts for us. One day I was on my way to school, and trying to call him in before I left. He came running up the stairs and into the house, and I saw something in his mouth. I yelled at him to drop it, and he was startled and opened his mouth - and out flew a bird! Which of course started flying around the house, chased by Tiger, who was being chased by me. We finally got Tiger locked in a room, but nobody knows what happened to the bird.

Often when I left for school, he would follow me down the block. When he reached the first street crossing, he would stop and sit there, watching me for a little while, and then turn around and go home. One day, he didn't turn around. I didn't notice him following me, but he must have followed the whole way, because I was sitting in first period math, and we heard meowing outside the window. My friend went to look, and sure enough, Tiger was outside the window. I had to leave class and take him home (a great hardship, of course!)

In 1995, when Tiger was three, I went to Quebec for a year. I was devestated to leave him, and my mom even got me a poster-sized picture of him to take with me. While I was away, my friend's cat, Tiger's half-sister, was hit by a car outside our house. The driver, not knowing who the cat belonged to, knocked on our door and told my mom that she'd run over a cat - of course, Mom thought it was Tiger and was already trying to figure out how to tell me, before she got to the road and realized it wasn't him.

Of course, two years later, I went away for even longer, to university for four years. Although I came home every summer, I was still away for months at a time and missed him very much. I lived in houses with a couple of other cats, but none of them were remotely "my" cat. He bonded a lot with my mom during that time. She took very good care of him. Aside from his regular check-ups, he only had one extra visit to the vet, when he suffered from a loss of appetite and general lethargy. The vet found an issue with his liver, that looked like it was caused by a trauma. She figured it meant either he fell and landed hard on something, or somebody kicked him. Since cats usually land on their feet, unfortunately the kicking seemed more likely. I can't imagine anyone doing that to an animal, and whoever it was is very lucky that I never found out that they did it.

When I decided to move from Ottawa to Toronto after university, I knew I wanted to have Tiger with me. Unfortunately the trip was an ordeal. He had to fly cargo (at the time pets weren't allowed in the cabin), and I didn't know how he'd react, so I decided to have him given a mild sedative to help with the flight. Unfortunately, he had a very strong reaction to it, and when I finally claimed him at the baggage desk in Ottawa, he was still very out of it. His eyes were crossed and he couldn't walk straight. I took him home, but after an hour, I couldn't stand it and took him to an all-night emergency clinic. I was so scared that I had done something awful to him. But when we finally saw the vet, they said it was just the sedative, and we just had to wait for it to wear off.

Luckily, the next day he was much better - if still in for a rough day. We drove to Toronto, stopped in Gananoque on the way, and when we got there, my new roommate also had a cat, Beavis. Unfortunately, Tiger hated Beavis. Which meant he spent most of the next six months in my room. This was probably the least happy time of his life. He was always grumpy. I tried taking him for walks outside, since he'd lost his access to the outdoors, and sometimes he'd go along with it, more often not. After six months I knew we had to go, and we moved into a house with a co-worker of mine. The transformation was dramatic. He loved the house, especially the outside garden with the pond, which he would stand precariously on the edge of to drink out of. There was also a basement which was overrun with cobwebs, and my housemate and I never went into. But he would happily go explore and come back covered in dust. He did also find more hunting prey, and one morning I woke up to hear him running around the main floor. I called him, but he didn't respond. I called again, and he came bounding up the stairs, jumped on my bed...and dropped a mouse. Needless to say, my scream woke up my housemate.

By the time Tiger came to live with me, he was a fat cat. He weighed about 17 pounds, and when I took him to the vet in Toronto, they told me he needed to lose some weight. So the diet began. This was 2002, and at 10 years old, he was now a senior, which meant more blood tests too, which he hated. He would absolutely SCREAM when they took blood from him. I was never allowed in the room when they did it, so I would be sitting in the waiting room with other pet owners who would all look very concerned by the howling coming from the back, and I would have to explain that it was my cat, who was fine. Tiger hated the vet in general, of course. He would hiss and spit and bite and generally behave like a demon. One of our vets put in his file that gloves should be worn if trying to touch him!

After leaving that house, we lived in a couple of other apartments in Toronto. For several years, we lived alone, just me and him. He would always know when I was coming home, and be sitting at the door waiting for me. If I was significantly off schedule, I'd get an annoyed meow. He would lie down beside me when I went to sleep, stretched out head to foot. He liked to wander the hallways of the apartment buildings, sniffing at each door, and he always knew which one was ours to go back into. Although he was never that fond of toys in general, I did find one that he loved, a stuffed ladybug. He would attack it and fling it all over the place. It would be missing for a few days, then I'd find it under the coach or behind the TV or in the closet. I'd bring it out, and he'd attack it all over again. When I left for work in the morning, I would hide a treat somewhere in the apartment, somewhere different every day. He found them about 90% of the time, sometime before I got home.

In 2005, I decided that I was going to go to London for a year. They have quite strict pet import rules, so Tiger had to get microchipped and have a series of rabies vaccines and tests done. During the examinations, the vet thought they heard a heart murmur, but couldn't confirm anything. All of his paperwork came through, but our plans were put on hold when I met Todd. Soon Todd and I were spending almost all our free time together, split between his house and mine, and I felt like I wasn't spending enough time with Tiger. So when the opportunity came up, we decided to move in together, the three of us.

Tiger didn't care for Todd much, at first. He didn't like most people in general, so this wasn't very unusual. Once we started to live together though, he grudgingly accepted him. Around this time, during one of Tiger's routine check-ups, the vet diagnosed him with chronic renal failure. It is a degenerative kidney disease, meaning that his kidneys were going to deteriorate, and there was nothing we could do. But he wasn't exhibiting any major symptoms, and the vet said it was in a very early stage. So on top of his diet, which he was still on, he could now only eat a special science-formula kidney food. He now weighed about 13 pounds, much healthier than his previous 17!

Despite meeting Todd, I decided to go ahead with my year in London. After a lot of consideration and discussion, I decided it would be better for Tiger to stay in Toronto with Todd rather than come with me. It was a very tough decision, since he had been my closest companion for the past 7 years. But after his previous flight, I didn't want to subject him to the overseas flight. My apartment in London was going to be tiny, and I would often be away. So as hard as it was for me, I knew he would be happier in the bigger place in Toronto, where Todd would be there with him.

While I was away, Todd and Tiger got much closer. Todd instituted a "9 o'clock treat", which as any cat owner will know, Tiger took very seriously. If it was 9:03, and he hadn't had his treat yet, he would let you know it. Todd used the Friendly Giant whistle to alert him to the treat being ready, with the result that any time he whistled that tune, no matter where he was, Tiger would run to his food dish.

When I came back, we moved to Vancouver. This time Tiger was able to fly in the cabin with us, and we didn't use any sedative. He was of course scared, but it went much better than the first time. He adjusted well to life in Vancouver. Our bed had a duvet, which we'd never had before, and Tiger loved it. We just needed to look for the lump in the bed if we were ever missing him. I go to sleep earlier than Todd, so Tiger would come and cuddle with me until I fell asleep, then go out and sit on the couch with Todd while he watched TV.

On August 3, 2009, one year ago, we celebrated Tiger's 17th birthday. He was quite skinny now, down to 10 pounds. He was still eating his kidney diet food, plus his 9 o'clock treat. Recently we had started to have trouble with him using the litter box. He would go into the litter box, but when he tried to squat, he wouldn't go low enough, and would end up spraying on the floor. It was obviously unintentional, but we put it down to getting older.

The second week of September, we came home one day and he was walking very strangely. It was almost as if his hips were out of joint - I had never seen anything like it. We did our own examination - squeezed his legs all over, did a range-of-motion test, and couldn't see any evidence of pain. So we decided to give it a couple of days, and hope it would get better. When it didn't, we went to a new vet in Coquitlam.

The vet did a general examination, and said he seemed in very good shape for his age, and considering the CRF, which he'd had for nearly 4 years. He couldn't find any reason for the strange walk. They gave me potassium powder to give him, since it might have been a lack of potassium in his blood that was affecting his muscle strength. We started giving him the powder, which he hated, but nothing improved. A few days later, nothing had changed, and we took him to an emergency clinic. They did some x-rays and another examination, but also had no suggestions.

We tried to stop him from jumping and possibly injuring himself further, and bought a cage for him to stay in while we were at work. He started sleeping nearly all the time. And then he stopped eating. I think that was the first time when I really admitted to myself that this could be something very serious. We tried to force feed him, with little success. Not even tuna, his absolute favourite, could interest him. That day, on September 30th, I called the vet and we set up an appointment for the next day, and they were going to admit him and put him on IV to get some nutrients into him.

I went to bed. An hour later, Todd woke me up. He had been holding Tiger, and he'd had a kind of seizure. We called a cab and went back to the emergency clinic. When we had been there just a few days before, he was something like his usual self, growling and complaining the whole time. This time we put him on the examining table, and he just sat there, his head down. The vet came in and did a quick exam. He told us that Tiger's internal body temperature was very low, and there were signs that his organs were shutting down. I knew then for sure that he wasn't coming home with us.

He told us that they could keep him there and put him on IV, and he may recover somewhat, perhaps for a few weeks, but he didn't think there was any way to get back his full muscle use. He left us alone to talk about it. Looking at Tiger, just sitting on the table, we knew it would be selfish to keep him hanging on. It felt surreal. I couldn't comprehend that I would really never see him again. I held him and told him how much I loved him, and how much better my life had been for having him in it. I hope that on some level he knew that. The vet came back and prepared him for the injection. I knelt down so that I was eye level with him, and as they gave him the injection, I looked him in the eye and said goodbye. And he was gone.

Anatole France wrote "until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened." For 17 years, Tiger was my companion and my friend and I loved him. His loss has left a huge hole in my life, and it still hurts more than I want it to. But whenever I get sad, when I lie down to sleep and reach for him and he's not there, when I pull out a can of tuna and have to remind myself it's okay to use the can opener, I remind myself that I did have 17 wonderful years with him. I was one of the first people he ever saw, and the last one he saw. He wasn't a perfect cat but we had a bond that was special and unique, and it's okay to miss him. And I wanted to share that, on this, his birthday.

August 1, 2010

Nothing much to report on the job front - I've applied for a couple that I'd be quite happy with, and Todd's got his name in several places as well, so we're just waiting for things to come together. In the meantime, we're trying to enjoy the city without spending too much money!

We took a quick trip to Cardiff last week with the special July deals on train tickets - it only cost us £20 each for a return ticket instead of £75! We stayed at the Royal Hotel right downtown, and got lots of sightseeing in. We arrived around noon and had a quick pub lunch before going on to Cardiff Castle. I had been there before, but they had changed a few things, plus you can now take pictures inside the castle! And, of course, Todd hadn't seen it before. So we were there for several hours. We went to see Shrek: Forever After since cinema tickets are much cheaper than in London, and then for a nice dinner.

The next day we took a train just a few kilometres north of the city to Caerphilly, which has the biggest castle in Wales. It's largely a 19th-century reconstruction, but they did a good job of incorporating the remaining elements. After looking around there, we returned to Cardiff and did a self-guided walking tour put together by the tourist office. Unfortunately it had started raining, so it wasn't as enjoyable as it might have been. We ducked inside the National Museum, which is both a natural history and art museum, but by the time we were done there, it was full out pouring, so we headed back to the train station and caught the next train back to London. It was a really good trip overall and convinced us that we want to go back and do a full trip of Wales by car. Pictures from Cardiff are here.

Also last week we went for coffee with a friend from my time here before, and then went to see the new production of Aspects of Love. I was excited to see this show, as I've never seen it on stage, even though it was the second show I ever heard (I bought the CD right after seeing Phantom). It was pretty much exactly as I expected, with a really good cast. But my attention was pretty much distracted for the whole show by the fact that Andrew Lloyd Webber himself was sitting in my row!! Just five seats away from me ... and I didn't get a chance to speak to him! :-( Very disappointing, but it was still pretty exciting to get that close!

We got together with Karen and Gill and some of their friends for a nice dinner at Karen's house one night, and then met up with Amanda for lunch another day. We did one of the Beatles walking tours one day, and yesterday we saw a Picasso exhibit at the Gagosian gallery, and then spent several hours at the British Library, checking out the Treasures room and the Magnificent Maps exhibition.

Other than that, we've just been doing a few errands and working on the job hunt. On to August!