The Story of Toby the Cat

Toby was born under our house in 1996 or maybe 1997, I really don't remember now.  He was one of 9 kittens that we had to scoot out from the craw space under our family room.  This was an addition to our house that has a steal door for access.  Someone left it open and Toby's mom decided to have her kittens there.  The kittens stayed around the house for several weeks.  Toby and his sister would come up on the deck when I was outside.  I used to call them Samson and Delilah.  Delilah was always more standoffish.  She would never let me feed here without carefully approaching and then would grab food from my hand and run away to eat it.  Samson (Toby) would eat right in front of me and would let me pet him.  Later, Delilah disappeared and only Samson would come by.  I liked to think that she was taken in by some loving family, but I never knew what happened to her.  My daughter started calling Samson Toby and that name stuck.

Toby came around every day and we would feed him out on our deck.  After about a year , we started letting him come inside to eat.  He would then go right back outside and disappear until the next day.  Pretty soon he started hanging around in our family room after he ate.  Later he would come in to eat and lay in our bay window in the family room and sleep.  It got to the point where I would come home from work and he would follow me in from our driveway.  I would feed him and he would take his spot in the window and sleep.  I would pick him up and throw him out before I went to bed every night.

He started laying on Karen's lap every time she would come into the family room.  We never let him explore the house and he knew he was only allowed in that one room.  He would jump up and go over to Karen every time.  She hated it because he would purr and start to paw her.  Digging his razor sharp claws into her every time. She always said she hated that cat, but he certainly loved her, probably because she would be the one who always bought him food.

Every once in awhile he would escape into the other rooms of the house.  He would usually stop in the living room and find a spot on the couch where he would curl up into a ball and sleep until he was discovered.  He never once tried to scratch or bit anyone, at any time.  He never once went "to the bathroom" inside the house.  He would walk over to the door, stretching all the way, and just stand there until someone let him out.

Occasionally I would give him a bath.  He would always let me pick him up and drag him to the bathroom where I would sit him in the tub and use the shower massage head to clean him off.  He would hate it until he got wet and then would stand there and let me hose him down.  We would keep him inside until he dried off.  He always loved being clean even if he wasn't too keen on the bath idea in the beginning.

We even took him for rabies shots and once got him licensed.  He would always lose his collar and license tag.  There were several occasions when he would show up all beaten up.  He was obviously in a fight with some other animal.  On a couple of occasions he would have open wounds in his back and neck.  We would treat him with antibiotics applied to the wound and in his food.  He always recovered.  We even once took him to a vet to be neutered.  But the vet saw that he was injured in one of his many fights and would not perform the operation until he was totally recovered.  We never took him back.  I just could not do that to another male although Karen was right that it was the most responsible thing to do.

In late December 2000 I left for a 2 week sailing adventure to the Bahamas ( read more about this here ).  When I returned home, Toby was there to greet me.  Then shortly after New Years Day, actually the 3rd of January, he disappeared.  I somehow knew he would never be back again.  I just felt it somehow - I just knew her was dead - maybe the victim of another animal or the front tires of a Buick - I will never know.  I am writing this on March 10th of 2001 and we still have a lot of cat food in our cupboard just incase he shows up.  I still wonder what ever happened to him.  He was my friend and somehow we understood each other.  I decided to write down his story so that he will be remembered many years from now.

My friend is still missed by me.

Don