Buzz and Tubby (Cats 1)

Cats have been an integral part of my life from the very start, with a few painful gaps; I'm starting the story at the beginning.1

Buzz was a cream Persian--long fur, and long claws, too! My parents got him at a pet store in New York City while they were in college; he was about four months old at the time. He lived with us at our apartment in Asheville, North Carolina, and in the parsonage at Stoney Knob, about ten miles outside of Asheville. Buzz was best known for his habit of drinking from the toilet. When my dad took the call to the church in Birmingham (Alabama), Buzz, being purebred, was valuable, and we needed the money to make the move, so he was sold.2

Buzz had a sort of cousin who lived with my grandparents in Asheville. Tubby (official name, Tobias) was a cream Angora and looked a lot like Buzz. They are hard to tell apart in family pictures. For a while they lived in the same house, but in different rooms. Tubby had a talent for chasing dogs--in fact, his favorite sport was riding on their backs! He would lie in ambush on the back porch, and descend from a convenient step. But of course, once his reputation got around, the dogs stayed away. I was thrilled when I heard that we were going to take Tubby to Birmingham to live with us. He was 13 years old at the time, but you would never have known it (I was the ripe old age of six).3

We found out, on our trip back, just how full of life Tubby was. My mother had some strange ideas about cats. One of them was that Tubby would be happy for 363 miles in a cardboard box. A special feature of travel in those days was the car bed that my dad made from a big piece of plywood, cut to fit the whole back seat area, with hinged legs to support the part over the floor. It was covered with quilts. I was on the left side, my brother David was on the right, and baby Phillip was in a narrow cradle down the middle. Tubby's box was placed under the bed, and we started out. About 20 miles down the road we noticed a big bunch of cream-colored fluff oozing out of the crack between the blankets and the door. Tubby curled up with us three boys, but my mother decreed that this would not do. So we stopped in the next town and bought some brown paper tape--the "lickum" kind. Tubby was sealed into the box, with a circle of air holes added in the side. The new arrangement lasted about 75 miles, until the angry cat had shredded the box in the vicinity of the air holes. This time he had made his point, and he was allowed to curl up in the back window, where he slept for the rest of the trip.4

We had an enclosed porch in Birmingham, and my dad made a cat door for Tubby, so he could go in and out when he pleased. It was great to have a cat again, and I loved to brag about how he chased dogs, but it didn't last very long. About six months later Tubby mysteriously disappeared. Fabricated explanations didn't help my grief (I was told that maybe he had been stolen and sold by someone who needed the money, but I knew that he was only part Angora). Getting another cat, even an orange Persian, didn't do it, either. I never forgot Tubby; he was the inspiration for the first story I ever wrote for class in school, and I was past sixth grade before I could keep from getting tears in my eyes every time I thought of him.