Citizen journal: Visits for food were gifts from stray cat

On a cold Thanksgiving night three years ago, I carried our roasting pan outside onto the deck, turned a cardboard box over its top and placed a heavy brick on it – an instant second refrigerator for our leftover turkey.

In the early morning hours I heard a clatter on the deck. At the sliding glass door, when I turned on the light, I saw a large cat amid a scattering of cardboard, roaster parts and turkey bones, gulping down food as fast as he could. He must have been starving, for even seeing me in the doorway did not deter him. Eying me warily, he kept grabbing and gulping.

He was the largest cat I had ever seen. As thin as his big, black-and-brown-striped frame was, he still must have weighed 25 pounds. As we stared at each other through the glass, I considered with amazement his tawny coloring, his amber eyes, sharp ears, large feet and short stub of a tail. A lynx? A cross-breed? A large feral cat? I will never know!

Since the turkey leftovers were a loss, and I was a little frightened of him as he chewed and growled, I let him eat for some time before getting the broom and shooing him off, to clean up the mess.

But the next morning he was back, so hungry that when I placed a bowl down and started pouring food for him, he rushed over and began hungrily tearing at it. As I drew my hand away, however, he suddenly realized how close I was and, with an angry spat, raked my arm with his claws.

Each morning after that he was on the deck when I got up. And every morning for months I put out a bowl for him, talked to him softly and fed him. And two more times I got my arm painfully raked when, in his hunger, he got too close to me.

Months went by and spring approached. All this time I talked to him as I fed him, scolding him gently when he struck out at me. And slowly Tigger, as I had begun to call him, began to relax his guard just a bit. He still crowded the food bowl as if starved, but he no longer struck at me if I got too close.

One day I decided to chance an arm-raking once again. Slowly, as he gulped his food at my feet, I talked to him and gingerly leaned down and stroked his back. To my surprise he continued eating but raised his back to meet my hand. A few days later I risked leaning down and lifting him into my arms. He was as stiff as a rod as I stoked him, and his whole body quivered, but he didn’t resist. I held him often after that, outside there in a deck chair as I stroked and petted him. But I didn’t press my luck further; I just accepted the gift he allowed me that summer, and enjoyed him immensely on his own terms.

One morning in early fall when I went to feed him, I noticed his bowl was still full. Later that week I found him peering in the glass slider when I came to the door. He didn’t eat; he just stood there and let me stroke him. Finally he started for the steps. At the top he turned and looked back at me for a long moment. Then he continued down the stairs.

I never saw Tigger alive again. The weather turned cold, and the leaves began to fall. And one day my husband, who had been raking in the yard, came in and told me, “I found your cat.” He was lying curled up on a pile of leaves under the lower deck, in his last sleep. And my heart was sore with understanding as I remembered that last morning. How he had come looking for me. How he had waited to have his back stroked. How he had started down the steps, then turned back to look at me one long, last time. And how, in picking his final resting place, he had yet chosen to be close by.

I still miss that beautiful, feral animal that, although never really tamed, for a short time had allowed me into his life, and in his own way had learned to love me, as I loved him.