My Best Pet Story: the Cat Who Watched Superman

We were given Charlie a year after we were married. He was 4-6 months old. We had him around 9 years. His entire family died of feline leukemia, which he was diagnosed with when he was 2 year old. However he lived an otherwise healthy life until he died at 9 1/2 years of age due to complications from pneumonia.

Charlie was a flame point Balinese/Siamese with a very unique personality. He was very much an equal part of our family and made sure that we never forgot that. Whenever we would talk about having children, our friends would say that we didn't need any since we had Charlie.

When we first brought Charlie home, he hid himself under the seat and yelled all the way home, all four hours. I wasn't sure that this was going to work out. But Charlie moved in right away. He also learned to go with us everywhere in the car, to the point that while we would drive down the street other drivers would notice and comment that we had a cat racing through the car or waving back at them while we drove.

We took him everywhere, so we didn't think twice about taking him to the drive-in to see the original Superman movie with all of the special effects. We weren't surprised by his behavior since he watched TV at home and often blocked our view. While the movie was running Charlie was on the dashboard trying to catch Superman and participating with everything that was going on in the movie. At one point we realized that the couples in the cars on both sides of us were watching Charlie watch the movie and laughing hysterically over his antics. They weren't watching Superman. We could just imagine their answers to family and friends about the movie they didn't see.

I was still teaching at that point and one of our parents had donated a pile of stuffed toys to the school. My foster-mother, who was my boss, asked me to take them home since we couldn't keep them in the school due to a hepatitis outbreak.No one else wanted them. They ended up on our bed. Among those toys was a tiny Dutch doll.

One day, she disappeared. I found her and put her back. She kept disappearing until I realized that Charlie had swiped her. She was his and he was so attached to her that I couldn't even replace her covering when she became dirty. He slept with her, flipped her up in the air and required that we and every visitor toss her so that he could retrieve her for us to toss her again. He would drop her in the lap or at the feet of every visitor until they tossed her for him to retrieve. I also found her everywhere; on top of the refrigerator, in the sink, on the counter, in the tub and other places.

For a long time, he was the only pet in our household. Then we acquired a tortoise named Stanley Steamer, a cockatoo, hermit crabs and an iguana named George. Before the other pets came Charlie would destroy something of mine every-time he was mad at me and hide far under our bed and caterwaul as soon as we came home. After the pets came, he would clobber Stanley or go yell at the bird or the hermit crabs.

When I got pregnant with our son, I knew that we would need to do something about Charlie. I made a cover for the bassinet because I could just see Charlie sitting on our baby in the bassinet. Well..This calculation was without our son's character being taken into account. I ended up being the one who needed rescuing.

Even when our son was a newborn he equally competed with that cat for my lap. When he was able to get around, our son was chasing Charlie under the bed and around the house. They ended up being great friends.

We moved to Florida when our son was six months old. We packed up the biggest truck we could get and pulled our car on a tow-dolley behind the truck. My plants, the iguana and the tortoise were in the car. Charlie was in the truck cab with us. His litter box was under my feet and our son was between my husband and me.

For nine days people saw us driving across country with our cat and son often looking back at them. When we were out of the truck Charlie would watch us from the dashboard. Many people would comment on the cat in the truck.

We moved onto our present property two weeks after we arrived. It had a huge screen-room. Charlie and our son loved that screen room. It was their front yard. Charlie enjoyed his new home until we started rescuing lost kitties. He didn't like to share. He made a new door through the wall of the screen-room and refused to be a house-cat anymore. He would come home to eat, then he would either lay out in the yard or across the street in
our neighbor's yard. The neighbor loved him because he thought he was funny. He enjoyed watching Charlie chase stray dogs and cats off of his property.

Christmas 1990, Charlie had disappeared for a week or two. We had looked everywhere for him. Then he came out from under the house looking really sick. We nursed him back from the brink. But he wouldn't take it slowly and died of a heart attack.

Now, we have several cats and one of them is like Charlie. His name is Jeremiah Twinkle-toes. He's a beautiful dark red tabby with some Siamese in him since all the cats in this area have some Siamese in them. He's a year old. He doesn't retrieve. But he has developed his own game. He likes to chase me down our 25 foot hallway, tackle my feet, then have me slide him all the way back up the hallway on his feet, his back or belly. Or if I'm going into my bedroom and I push him out of the doorway, he tackles my feet with both paws and curls up
around my feet and ankles, licking and nibbling them. He also watches TV the same way Charlie did.