The Tig Reports

[Paddler]

Tig Reports, the Backstory

One warm fall day in the late '90s found me on the porch, sharpening a knife in preparation for dicing a basket of chilies for the dehydrator when up walked a stray cat. He was friendly and sat down beside me. He looked up at me and gave me “The Silent Meow”. (The Silent Meow is designed to be the most pathetic expression in a cat's repertoire of importuning expressions.) He liked to have his head scratched. He liked to have his scruff rumpled. His head looked too big for his body which was hardly more than a fur bag full of bones. He had been living rough for a long time and was losing ground. His fur was dirty; he could no longer spare the energy to groom himself. He needed a home.

Jody and I already had two cats and didn't really want a third. With three cats and two people, there wouldn't be enough laps to go around. But this guy was a perfect gentleman so we decided to take him in , put a little weight on him, and then find him a good home with someone else. Uh-Huh! We all know how that turns out, don't we?

So we let him into the house, much to the dismay of Brigit and Furgason. They chased the new arrival under the bookcase instanter. When it became evident that the new guy was going to stay, he was given rights to the dining room and clearance to visit the food dishes and the litter box. Everything else was off-limits.

The stranger was a gray cat with black markings that looked like fish scales. There were darker tiger stripes on his sides. His underside was white and there was white spilling over to his legs and feet. There was a narrow white stripe down the center of his back about where the dorsal fin is on a shark. He was what we call a mackerel tabby in these parts. After he had been with us for about a month, we named him “Tiger” – or variously Tigger, or Tig, or Mr. Tiggs, or The Tigmeister, or . . .

He gradually earned full privileges including lap sitting and induction into the Crepuscular Order of Bed-cats. In the evening, when the laps were full, the odd cat out would circle our easy chairs like a parlor shark waiting for an opening. Eventually, he and Furgason would become hunting partners; Tig pointed the game and Furgason led the attack.

https://imgur.com/a/7fWbr

Tig supervises crystal set construction.

MCR>
Abstractor of the Quintessence
Order of the Digital Grail