Over the Rainbow Bridge to Catnip Land

The Rum Tum Tigger-Tugger, January 1996-15 May 2008


It's a perfect spring day here--the wind has exhausted itself, the sun is a warm balm, things are growing faster than the price of fuel...and I'm in a pool of tears. Our senior cat, Tigger, our big orange bobtail cat, died sometime overnight; I found him in the garden, no marks on him or signs of distress. I suspect it was simply a heart attack and he went to sleep. That's some comfort...but still my own heart feels like it has been ripped open. It's been nearly a year since we lost Quincy, and of course the upset with Dexter is still tender.

My son and I got Tigger and his sister JennyAnyDots from friends of ours who had six kittens. The three males were all orange bobtails; the females, all mackeral tabbies. Tigger had a strong personality, intensely affectionate, inclined to climb into a lap and then put his paw up on our faces. And purr! He was always a champion at purring, but even more he was a champion at putting the other cats in their places. He had, we would say, the fastest paddy-paws in the east.


Tigger was always my gardening companion, and I never saw a cat with more of a taste for catnip. He was obsessed with it. When we moved here 9 years ago, the first spring there was a giant catnip plant in the back yard, with gazillions of babies under it. Tigger was in catnip heaven as a result, and he ATE. EVERY. PLANT. He even ate the roots of the little plants. Now, granted, this took him quite a few weeks, and he did have help from the other catchildren, but he was the chief eater of catnip. The next year the big plant did come back a bit, and he finished it off; but he always went back regularly to the spot where that plant was, even this spring, remembering his glory days of overindulgence, I guess. He'd eat catmint in a pinch, too, but his main love was for his drug of choice.


Over the Rainbow Bridge, there are probably big fields of catnip, and cream and all the other delights that our beloved companion animals love to share. I'm sure that Tigger has already been greeted by Captain Sam Bucus and other members of the Bliss Dream Team, and by those beloved cats lost by Kylee and Joy and others (at the moment I'm in no shape to go check other blogs or I'll simply saturate my keyboard).

And the rest of the catchildren? They KNOW I'm sad. They're sticking to me like honey to velvet. Mungus and I will go out in a little while to bury our friend and to plant a shrub in his memory, of course. So there's no Bloom Day report from me today. The only happy note of course is that my Idol pick is in the top two...but even his music isn't lifting me right now. Though as I was writing this, one of his Axium songs came on my iTunes mix, and some of the lyrics seemed fitting for a final farewell to Tigger.

Walk away, it's your time
Deny the tear in my eye
Your memory will never die
At peace I trust in you every step of the way
To stay with me 'til the end of the day
So move on to your tomorrow as we all say goodnight
…Your memory will never die

"Balance" by David Cook


We miss you, Tigger. Your memory will never die.