Tigger

My mom has always had a special soft spot for orange cats, and she just couldn’t say no when our vet called saying there was a kitten there in need of a home. He came to us with the name Tarzan but was soon renamed Tigger, and there’s a common theme to these names you might not have expected outside of the letter ‘T.’ When Tigger plays, he leaps across the room! He jumps and pounces and bounces all over the place in the absolute cutest manner possible. It’s actually pretty terrifying to see him leap directly at you with his paws splayed open wide, but thankfully he keeps his claws in during playtime! This energy is what landed him the name Tarzan at the vet, with it resembling Tarzan swinging around, and with us he is our springy little Tigger (or Tiggy).

Tigger stayed with me in my room for his first couple days in the house, to get him used to things, and he and our other young male Oreo really got into some trouble with how wildly they liked to play. Both of them would shoot across the room, banging into all sorts of things and causing general mayhem wherever they went! It was funny to watch, but not so fun to clean up after when they knocked practically everything that wasn’t bolted down or too heavy for them over.

A couple weeks after Tigger came to stay with us, we learned a shocking truth about the day we first took him home. We had gone to see our vet and he told us that that had been Tigger’s last morning in the clinic. Tigger had been born with feline AIDS, and while people were interested in him before learning this fact, it turned everyone else away from taking him home. He had been in the clinic so long due to this that he had reached their holding limit. If we hadn’t have decided to go get him that morning, it would have been too late for little Tiggy! You can imagine as soon
as we got home he was smothered with all kinds of love and given a nice can of food (which we had also learned he had never tasted before coming home with us!).

We are so happy to have Tigger, and are even happier to know that us getting him that day made a difference. Our vet didn’t plan on telling us about Tigger’s impending doom that day since he didn’t want to make us feel pressured with our decision to bring him home. Which is very kind of him; I’m sure we would have all felt awful after-the-fact if we had learned about this if we didn’t take him in!

These days we’re preparing for Christmas with our cats, and plan on getting them a big cat condo-tree to give them something to climb (hopefully to keep them off the curtains!). Aside from Tigger, indoors we have Oreo (who I mentioned briefly and can be seen with Tigger in their photo), who is a little black and white part-Manx with a cute stubby tail, and Jinx who is our fluffy little lady with silky black fur. Then, outside (by their own choice!) we have Vassa, an older black male who, like Tigger, has feline AIDS, Ollie who is our Maine Coon, and Pippi, my own precious baby. At one point or another all three of our outdoor cats preferred to be indoors, but now that we’ve moved out into the country they enjoy staying outside.

We also have dogs but, for the most part, the cats and dogs don’t mind each other. Occasionally our Beagle will get a bit too nosey with the cats or charge at them, but often times you can see them coexisting in the living room together, each claiming a couch for their own. While spooked by the dogs at first, Tigger has learned not to let them bother him. He adjusted very quickly, actually, and has full rein of the house now that we don’t have to worry about him
with the dogs. He’s a regular part of the family now and I hope to be able to get more, less sad, stories about him in the years to come!