Another Tiger Story

I was cleaning out some old storage boxes on Sunday and came across some photos. One was a picture I knew existed but had managed to misplace. It was of my cat Tiger. Those of you from the Japantown dojo era would remember him from the mid-90's on. Tiger moved in in December or so of 1995. He was at the time around 5 months old. I moved to a cabin in the Santa Cruz mountains in 1996 and he came with me. Since he was very close to me and visa versa and was comfortable both in the mountains and at the dojo, I would commute with him. For the entire story of his life you can go to www.aikidosj.com and click into dojo friends and you will get most of it. But this picture reminded me of an adventure I didn't put into the dojo site.

It was early in '96. Tiger was barely over 6 months old and both he and I were living in the dojo. He went missing. He was inside and outside. But he would often come upstairs to sleep with me at night. So after a few days it was apparent that he was not just wandering around. Joan Sylvain helped me by putting together a poster with a photo of him and we both plastered the Japantown area with them. About a month after he went missing I got a phone call from a man who said he had my cat. He and his family lived in the Evergreen area and came to Japantown about once a month to shop. On their last visit they had encountered Tiger lying on the street as they were driving. They stopped and realized he was friendly and immediately fell in love with him and took him with them. They thought he was a stray. After a month they returned again to Japantown and saw the posters and realized that Tiger belonged to someone. So they called the number on the poster which was the dojo number and we connected. I went to go pick him up. He spent thus a month with them. They had given him the name Rocky. Afterwards I would call him occasionally by that name and he would give me a funny look. And they gave me the above photo.

One thing about Tiger was that he loved to lie around in wash basins. So seeing the photo brought back many memories. It is ironic that I recently found the photo of Marty the dog, who was the subject of my previous blog. Then I find a photo of Tiger that I had been looking for for years. I no longer remember the name of the family who watched him for a month. A bit later Tiger's mom Dinah had another litter with a kitten who looked much like Tiger. So I contacted the family and they took Tiger's sibling lookalike. Apparently his personality was much different than Tiger's so I am not sure it worked out.

It is interesting that after Tiger, the cats I have been very close to have been female. A psychic friend told me that even though he was a cat he was balanced masculine/feminine and thus a double being. Which is a high level of being cat or human.. I know I still feel his presence strongly. When Lily went missing a couple of years ago I would ask him to help keep her safe and to see to it that she came back. And she did.
I hope you enjoy the photo as much as I did finding it after all these years.

I just put this video on youtube. Just music. Short. I recorded it on the ipad I got from Maurice Gregoire. It sure makes recording music easy. It is one of my favorite Chet Baker songs. I hope you enjoy it.