Untitled Document

Tommie’s Tribute

Pedigree

We had just lost an absolutely gorgeous, short-haired brown cat, and I wanted another. At the time, I knew little about pedigreed cats, but when I saw an advertisement from someone within driving distance for a Havana Brown, I figured that would be the cat for me.

When we got to the breeder’ house, she took the tiniest little brown guy out of his cage, where he’d lived with his siblings and mother, and put him in my arms. As she walked us through the house, showing us all her other kitties, I think she thought I had no intention of ever putting that little guy down.

She asked what we expected to pay for him. Having bought the other brown cat from a local breeder, sans pedigree, for $100, I told the Havana Brown breeder that we’d paid $100 for our last cat. She said, “O.K, but I can’t include his pedigree for that.” We happily agreed and carted our new treasure, now named Tomahawk, or Tommie for short, home.

However, the story doesn’t end there. I told the breeder, as requested, when we had Tomahawk spayed. To my surprise, she sent his pedigree in the return mail. I did subscribe to several cat magazines, so I looked up Tommie’s mother and father: they were the number one and two Havana Browns in the U.S!

But I don’t think the breeder was sorry she let her boy go for so little. I kept in touch with her for many years, and she kept offering to give me some more Havanas. Unfortunately, since we traveled a lot (and took our cats with us), we didn’t feel we could handle any more cats.

Homecoming

When we first got tiny kitten Tommie home, having read all about how to introduce a new kitten to a house and to your other cats, I put Tommie by himself, in a bathroom, away from all our other cats. Since he’d never been out of a cage, I thought that he might need a small, controlled environment to adjust to his new surroundings. And all the kitties would have a chance to become accustomed to the scent of each other.

I was wrong.

Tommie made much noise, and so I kept going into the bathroom to pet and talk to him. On one such visit, he darted out, quick as a flash. Instead of acting terrified, he simply acted exhilarated. His philosophy was evidently to pounce on anything smaller than a bread box and to climb anything larger. So all the drapes were scaled and our two other cats jumped on. Repeatedly.

Finally, Tommie got tired and dropped off to sleep. So much for needing careful adjustment.

Tommie and the Shepherd Boy

I kept most of my valuable and fragile things on the fireplace mantle, since our other cats never got up there. But that certainly wasn’t true of Tommie! He jumped up there regularly. Actually, “jumped” isn’t quite the right term: it was more like he beamed himself up. There was no apparent effort, just one graceful movement.

So it isn’t surprising that, at Christmas time, he got himself into the Creche I set up every year. He left most of the figures alone, but there was one figure, a shepherd boy holding a sheep on his shoulders, that really attracted Tommie’s attention. Unfortunately, the figure was an antique, and Tommie picked it up and dropped it off the mantle. Over and over again. No matter where I tried to hide the shepherd, Tommie found it, picked it up, and dropped it off.

Once he missed the carpet, and the figure hit the slate hearth instead. Predictably, the figure shattered. That really excited Tommie. He eagerly helped me pick up all the pieces. By swatting every piece I hadn’t found yet.

Luckily, I was able to put the figure back together. Lots of glue, plaster, and repainting made it about as good as new. And finally, amazed at my prolonged stupidity, I used picture hanging tape and attached the shepherd firmly to the mantle. Much to Tommie’s dismay.

Tommie, The Great Hunter

I was surprised at how good a hunter Tommie was, since he’d obviously not had a chance to be taught hunting skills by his mother (having been in a cage until we brought him home).

One time I watched him hunt a flock of birds picking up gravel in our driveway. (We spent summers in Montana, in a travel trailer. When the temperatures inside went above 100, we all had to move outside). I watched since I knew that, the birds being in the center of an open space, he wouldn’t actually be able to get to them.

He would creep very slowly closer to them, keeping an eye on all of them. He carefully used every bit of cover, every bit of weed and grass, on his very slow, deliberate path toward them. When one of the birds seemed the least bit disturbed, Tommie would back off a bit and wait for them to calm down. Then he’d resume his slow creep toward them. This lasted about 10 minutes; at which point, he had exhausted all available cover, and it was just open space between him and them. But to watch him hunt was amazing!

In the summers, due to our travel trailer getting very hot in the sun, we’d let our kitties out, at least as long as we were home to supervise. And we’d never leave home without making sure are kitties were all safe inside.

Generally, when called, Tommie would come. Being a cat, he wouldn’t come right away, but usually with 15-20 minutes of being called, he’d show up. But one evening he did not. We called for him several times, with no response. It was getting dark, and still no Tommie. We started looking for him in all his usual “haunts,” but still no Tommie. We then had to use flashlights to continue the search.

I finally found him. He’d found a beetle, a beetle big enough to give African Rhinoceros beetles challenge to their claim of being the biggest. Since the beetle was so big, Tommie hadn’t tried to do anything with it: he was just watching it, obviously much too busy to come home. So I sat down with him and we both watch the beetle for a while.

The “Mountain Climber”

As is true of many oriental-type cats, Tommie enjoyed getting to the top of things. In the summers, this included our camping trailer. The trailer had a roof above its own roof (to keep the sun off, and to keep the temperature inside as cool as possible), and so Tommie would simply climb up one of the poles to get to the trailer roof. He’d spend hours up there.

But sometimes, he’d get a little carried away with himself, and would go up one of the poles all the way to the metal roof above the trailer. Being metal, the roof was extremely hot. So Tommie would yell. Very loudly. Until my husband would get a ladder and go up it to get Tommie down. And then Tommie would look very pleased with himself.

The Burglar

One time we came home from work and found most of our cupboard doors opened. Immediate terror: we’d been burglarized! My husband and I carefully looked around the house, and didn’t see anyone and didn’t see that anything was missing.

So I began closing the cupboard doors. Then I noticed that Tommie was re-opening them as fast as I was closing them: a regular cat burglar!

He enjoyed opening those doors for the rest of his life. He’d carefully look inside each cupboard, and then go onto the next. Unlike our other cats, he’d never get into the cupboard, just look.

His Beloved Scratching Pads

His favorite toys were those cardboard, catnip-impregnated scratching pads. We got at least one for him every Christmas. But he was very possessive of “his” pad. One time, in an effort to get “his” pad away from our other cats, he actually picked it up between his front paws and, walking on his hind legs, tried to move the pad away from them!

But usually, he just parked himself on top of the pad and swatted any cat who dared to come close to his pad.

How to Get What You Want

I often ate in front of the T.V. Of course, Tommie would always want me to share, and I almost always did, keeping in mind not to give him too much so as not to spoil his appetite for his nutritionally complete cat food. Which, of course, he did not understand.

One day I was eating a open-faced tuna sandwich. Tommie really wanted all of it, but I was trying to limit him to his share. I was also watching something I had recorded on our new VCR. Suddenly, instead of my show, the TV started recording something else over the top of my tape. Tommie had walked on the remote.

Since the VCR was new, I had no idea how to stop it (I didn’t even know that the VCR had a “one button record” capability). So I ran over to the VCR, trying to save as much of my show as possible, turned the thing off and grabbed the manual. Eventually, I had it all figured out. But when I returned to my dinner, all that was left was two pieces of bread.

I always claimed that Tommie had done all that on purpose.

Tom in the yard