Comet: Tom's Tail

His story is a strange one. Not how we got him, but why we kept him. (We couldn't afford the four cats we already had.)

We have five cats. This one is the youngest. My husband rescued him from the bitter cold at a gas station back in February. He was (and still is, though he's grown a lot) a kitten. Based on his growth and when he lost his baby canine teeth, we estimate that he was born around Halloween 2016.

How we got him:
In the early morning hours, my husband stopped by a gas station across the street from where he works. It was bitter cold outside. There was a small, hungry cat that wanted attention and food.

My husband is a big softy for cats. (We both are.) He didn't want to leave him there. So he called me. We decided he should bring the cat home and we'd turn it over to the local no-kill shelter.

He brought the cat home.

Why we kept him:
Two or three hours before my husband called, I had a hyper-realistic dream that caused me to wake up sobbing like an idiot.

In my dream, everything was as it was in waking life. Except my (black) cat Tom, who has been dead for eleven years, walked into the bedroom, looking as alive as he ever did. (In this dream, I was aware that he was dead. I didn't dream that he was still alive.)

He urgently demanded my attention, as he had always done when someone was sick, injured, or was doing something incredibly stupid and needed assistance.

I got up to follow him and he led me to the front door, demanding to go outside. That was extremely unusual, as Tom had been an indoor cat and rarely ever went outside. He would only go outside with me, and he almost never did that.

So I opened the door and followed Tom outside, my huge, longhaired black Maine Coon/Norwegian Forest Cat mix following at my heels.

Tom led us down the street and a few blocks away. He'd never left our yard the whole time we had him, yet he knew exactly where he was going, and he was going there with a purpose.

After a few minutes, we come across a cardboard box full of black shorthair kittens. Tom immediately begins caring for them like a mother cat would. (Tom was a super friendly cat and absolutely loved kittens.)

I woke seconds later, crying my eyes out because I miss Tom. He was around twenty-two years old when he died, but he had been lively and youthful. His death was not by natural means and was extremely traumatic. I was a teenager when he died. (The details of his death and how it forever changed me will probably be the topic of a future post.)

About half an hour after my husband called, he walks through the door with a black shorthair kitten on his shoulder. He didn't tell me the cat was black because he knows that I have a deep connection with black cats. He didn't want that to influence my decision on whether or not to bring him home. My husband hadn't realized the cat was a kitten until he had gotten the kitten in the truck. He thought it was a small adult, small because of being a stray.

Looking into the kitten's eyes, I recognized him as one of the kittens in the box Tom had led me to. He was older and bigger, but I had no doubt that he was one of them.

Immediately, my fourteen year old flame point named Cosmo was smitten with the new arrival. Cosmo had grown up with Tom in his life. Cosmo and Tom were so close, that I almost lost Cosmo shortly after Tom's death. (He stopped eating, playing, and overall being a cat.)

Why I Call Comet Tom's Tail':
Comet has several personality traits that Tom had. His face and eyes also look a great deal like Tom, and it's not because they were both shorthair black cats.

Comet also has a few personality issues. My husband and I suspect that these issues are what led to him ending up at that gas station. These issues would render him unadoptable on top of him being a black cat, which would likely lead to him being euthanized.

We had decided to keep him before these issues became apparent. Upon encountering these problems, we didn't even consider changing our minds about keeping him. All of our cats are special needs in one way, shape, or form. No skin off our backs.

Tom didn't have any of the problems Comet has.

But Tom had a broken tail and a broken purr. Tom's purr was raspy and uneven due to an injury sustained in his youth as a stray. His tail was knobby and kinked, it couldn't straighten all the way. It had been broken in many places, also in his time as a young stray.

I feel Tom in Comet. I feel that Tom brought Comet to us. Is Comet Tom reincarnated? If he is, he's only a partial reincarnation. Comet is very much his own cat.

I like to think that Comet is the reincarnation of Tom's tail. For whatever reasons, he's broken in some ways.

I think that maybe Tom, knowing how badly I'd been missing him lately, how much I've felt that I need my Tom back, and knowing that Comet needed a home that would accept him even with his flaws, brought us together. That Tom is still doing what he did best and prided himself in from beyond this world: Taking care of others.

Call me crazy, that's okay.