My Boy from under the bridge
He was just a kitten when I found him under a bridge in the park with his frightened mom. She’d already given birth to a previous litter, which my beloved corgi Paris had discovered and alerted me to during our morning walk. Along with my cat-friendly neighbor, we rescued the kittens for adoption, but Mommy Cat, ever-fleet and attuned to peril, eluded us.
I began bringing her food twice daily, coinciding with my walks with Paris. Sometimes, Mommy was waiting under the bridge, eager for sustenance but not amenable to touch. Other times, she wasn’t. I grew attached to her, worrying when she didn’t appear. On this particular day, she was there — with three new kittens nursing at her side.
It took weeks for the kittens to venture to us, clambering over Paris as she sat patiently, enduring their little claws tugging at her coat. Mommy Cat let me pet her, her confidence finally won. As luck would have it, however, I was only able to capture one of the three kittens for adoption. The other two, a ginger male and black female, sidestepped my traps and persistent hand, until it became clear they weren’t going to let themselves be caught.
The black female matured, seeking out other territory in the park. I ran into her on occasion and managed to feed her, but she eventually turned wild and disappeared. The ginger male, whom I named Boy, stayed at Mommy Cat’s side, growing into a lithe, young feline. He scaled trees with astonishing speed and stalked the waterfall and surrounding bushels. And without fail, he was sitting by the bridge, every morning and evening at the same hour, when I showed up with food. He joined Paris and me on our walks, eliciting astonished laughs from the Chinese ladies feeding the ducks, at the sight of me with a corgi and a cat moving in tandem around the pond.
Over time, I succeeded in capturing Boy and Mommy for neutering; after I trapped them, I had them temperament-tested for adoption by the feral cat program at the SPCA. I was told they couldn’t be tamed for indoor living, so once they recovered from their surgeries, I delivered them back to their bridge, committed to feeding and watching over them as best as I could.
Four years passed. Mommy and Boy grew to love me, and I loved them, but my bond with Boy was special. He lurked in the bushes by the road, close to where I parked my car, always eager to greet me. He swirled like marmalade between my legs, bumped noses with Paris, and sat forlorn when we departed for home. He lodged in my heart, until one night during a storm, my worry for him and Mommy sent me driving up to the park with a flashlight and carrier to fetch them, searching the mudflow under the bridge. Mommy huddled beneath the overhang, miserable and wet, unreachable. Boy was nowhere to be seen.
Calling in sick at work, I raced home to fetch Paris. As the rain ceased, I searched the park for hours, hoping our presence would lure Boy from wherever he was hiding. The thought of never seeing him again terrified me; I understood the risk of caring for feral cats, the odds they’d fall prey to dogs or predators, or, like Boy’s sister, vanish without a trace. But I couldn’t give up on him.
He showed up two days later, as dusk fell. Drenched and limping, he crouched at my feet. Mommy meowed plaintively from the bridge. Gathering him without resistance, I took him to the feral cat vet. Something had pursued him, injuring his left front paw as he escaped. The vet treated his wound, advising me to confine him for three days until the stitches dissolved and then release him. Once again, I was warned he couldn’t be tamed. He’d put up such a fight during treatment, he gouged a vet tech and had to be sedated.
I brought him home. I drove to the park and brought Mommy home. They hid under the guestroom bed as Boy healed. Paris wasn’t amused to have two cats in her house and she let them know it, so I set myself to finding a viable alternative. No one wanted to take in two adult feral cats. Mommy and Boy had to stay. Returning them to the bridge was out of the question.
They adapted to being indoors, staking claim to the guestroom in an uneasy détente with Paris. Upon her passing a year later, a devastating loss for me, Boy emerged to assume her place. He lolled on the sofa, napping or grooming himself, as I wrote my books. He patrolled the house with his elegant gait, ready to welcome the feral cats flocking at night to our deck for food. If we left the door open, he touched noses with a curious intruder, as if to reassure they were among friends. He never tried to leave the house; he knew he was luckier than them and wanted to share his comfort.
Mommy’s death following a valiant fight with diabetes plunged me into mourning. I was disconsolate, as I’d been after Paris’s passing, and sought refuge in long hours at my desk. Boy would pad up to my chair in my study and gaze at me intently with his beautiful green eyes, assuring me he was here and I wasn’t alone. Stretching his front legs to mine, he’d keep his eyes on me until I unpeeled myself from my seat, thinking he was hungry. Winding between my ankles, his purr loud and steady, he’d urge me to scoop him up. I’d kiss his face and his eyes would soften, his lids at half-mast. He’d turn to me with a gentle look of consolation and lick my nose. He knew what I needed, when I did not, and he saw me through my grief with unfaltering resolve, though he was missing his mother, too.
People often say, “It’s just a cat.” They do not understand how the love of an animal transforms us, teaches us to reach beyond ourselves; that in loving a pet as they love us, we put other needs before our own. Boy was far more than just a cat to me. He was my friend and steadfast companion. Though he also bonded with my husband, I was the one he looked after. When I went away on a business trip, he pined. When we took a vacation, he refused to have anything to do with our pet sitter. He remained feral in his mistrust of strangers, in his devotion to the human who’d found him under the bridge, but safety and the passage of years into seniority mellowed him. Our vet described him as a “perfect gentleman” during our infrequent visits, as his health was robust. He was no longer deemed untamable.
In his fourteenth year, Boy traveled for the first time on a plane with me across the country. I’d initiated a precipitous move that upended my world. And as if he knew once again how lost I was, Boy gave me his final gift.
Unbeknownst to me, he already had the cancer that would end his life, yet he rallied for the move, the unfamiliarity of our new surroundings, and my gradual, anguished realization of what I had done. My anxiety, a bane since childhood, spiraled until I felt helpless, on the verge of contemplating the unthinkable. Then he couldn’t hide his illness anymore. As his appetite faded and he turned frail, an emergency visit and ultrasound rendered the diagnosis. Bereft, I stood alone outside the vet’s office, waiting for Boy to be brought out to me; on impulse, I texted my husband after months of silence to tell him that Boy was ailing. My husband texted back at once: “Call me.”
My Boy departed this world with the stoic elegance he displayed in life. I held him in my arms as he quietly passed and whispered that I would always love him. I always will. His purity of heart, his courage and grace, his sage innocence, were greater than that of any person I’ve known. He is irreplaceable. The grief is immense, his absence a chasm in my heart, but I can still feel him, evanescent now, swirling between my ankles. The flick of his striped tail at my calves, his velvety purr and the nudge of his pink nose.
“You don’t belong here,” he told me. “Go home.”
And so, I did.
