The great escape

One day, while we still were living on Wright Street, Tarquin saw Greta while Lloyd was outside putting out some dry cat food. He darted outside. Greta looked at him briefly but then ran to the neighbor’s yard. Evidently Tarquin had too much of the human about him now. Suddenly realizing he was outside and overwhelmed by the wide openness of it all, Tarquin darted under the deck. I ran outside and lay on the ground, trying to entice him out with a variety of cat treats. One time he was about to head toward me, but a train went by and scared him (we lived on the corner of 4^th and Wright Streets and the train tracks paralleled 4^th). He bolted back further under the deck and stared out at me. 

Finally, I hooked up the can opener near the back door and started running it. Finally, Tarquin summoned up his courage, emerged from under the deck, and darted back into the house. I was crying tears of joy when he decided to return to the house. I looked over at Lloyd and said “Thank God for the electric cat caller. He knows when he hears that sound he’s going to get a can of tuna.”

Maybe it was the electric cat caller, but maybe it was because it was getting quite chilly outside. So chilly, in fact, that it had started to snow, light fluffy stuff dancing and swirling around the deck. “Boy am I glad we got him in when we did,” I laughingly said to Lloyd. “Otherwise I’d be lying on my belly, getting coated with snow.”

More comfy that living under a deck!

Lloyd nodded his head and looked over at the little black cat hungrily wolfing down the tuna that I had spooned into his bowl as a reward. “You know, Tarquin had a choice just then,” Lloyd said. “He could have chosen to go back to his feral ways. But he chose to come back to you. So he’s not a feral cat anymore. He’s seen and lived in both worlds and realizes that what he needs is here with us inside.”

He had us for 14 years. Tarquin never seemed particularly interested in going outside—especially after we moved from the Wright Street house and his relatives. Only a few weeks before he died, though, something possessed him to go out onto the front porch. He must have snuck out as I went out to get something from the car. Walking up the steps I noticed a black cat. Hey wait, that’s not just any black cat, that’s Tarquin. He was sniffing at a flower pot. I didn’t want to startle him, so I slowly opened the door and said: “Tarquin. Go inside.” He did. No questions asked. Maybe it all came back to him—“Oh, yeah, the big outdoors. I think I like it better in the house.”