Goodbye Timmy (1999-2021)

I have to say goodbye to my most difficult hiking partner, Timmy.

Not a successful backpacking trip. The sling is for carrying the cat.

Admittedly, he didn't get to choose to be a hiking partner. He liked to see new places, but the long stretch of new, getting ever further from anything familiar was just too much. Also, he was already 20ish then, so I didn't expect him to walk the whole way. He wasn't too keen on being carried, either. He could make a 6 mile hike take the entire day, so most the time he just had to be locked away in the trailer. Poor guy.

Tried letting him perch on the top of my daypack, too.

But boy-oh-boy did he love camping. With it, he had all sorts of new places to explore, but had a familiar home base to return to. We'd get to a new spot and he couldn't be stopped from scrambling out to see where he was now. (Well, I suppose I could have tried harder as I did at gas stations.) He'd get going a bit further than I was quite comfortable with, checking out everything, but he was almost always good about coming when I called. Then, after a couple weeks, he'd start to get bored with this place and start popping up onto the front seat as if to say, "Come on, let's get to someplace else."

Home base by the Superstition Mountains. There were 3 cholla incidents.

There were some teething problems. The first trip, a long one from barely southern California to really northern California, made him nervous. We stopped in one spot along the way, but otherwise it was a lot of driving and he finished it with diareah. The next trip was a little less, and a little less affected. After that, the roaming in the car was pretty good. However, trying to use the litter pan (just set on the floor in front of the seat) while it was moving was tough. He got down at a couple lights only to find things were getting unsettled again.

Finding the joy in the precarious box the tent I got to backpack with the cat came in.

He wasn't always the super cool camping cat. In fact, I don't know much about his early life because he was "9 or 10" when I got him. The one piece of paperwork they gave us about him was a license receipt with his birthday as "1-1-1999" and when his shots expired. He was born in a barn among the straw and the kittens got collected with the mother at 2 days old. After another 2 days, they found the straw colored cat. He didn't seem to have suffered from it in the long run, but he was a very timid creature.

Some early photos of Timmy at the graduate house. Perhaps that one perch is worse for the plants than the squirrels. The wire grid should help with it too.

His first two years also included traveling around in a trailer. The rest of the years were sedentary, but they let him roam the evenings as he saw fit even though they'd removed his front claws. They had three of these kittens and we met the very outgoing one and the one they'd decided was one too many. So we took him away to where he had some more sedentary years. He got to go out on the porch at home.

Lounging, yawning, making sketchbook photography difficult, and just looking sweet.

He got to roam the gardens when off to a parent's house, even on the first trip. He was always reliable for realizing that a new place was home for now, as long as he was with his human and even sometimes when he wasn't. He would look initially out of place, but then I'd sit on a bed and there was this tiny change in him as he relaxed and decided that was "home base" and worked out from it.

Timmy hanging out at my papa's house. He loved his greens, not all of them safe greens. He didn't see anything important about my painting. (Well, he might be right about that.)

He had to learn new things out on the road. A tiny little trailer has no heat, so if it's 25°F in the closest comparable place someone is measuring (I hadn't yet got the indoor/outdoor thermometer) it is only some 9-14 F° warmer in the trailer. He thought that he should be able to stay warm by sleeping next to me and if it wasn't working, just push into me harder and it should work. I found it difficult to sleep with that much pressure against me, besides, the creature was probably cold, so dragged him under the covers. He immediately scrambled out. The next try, I held him under the covers until he could notice the warmth found there. He did and stuck around. For 5 minutes. Then out until he was cold and a nuzzle to get back under. This repeated until I fell asleep and he got stuck outside. He did a better job of staying under, maybe sticking out a paw for temperature regulation, after that. He also discovered that whiskers lightly applied to a face could eventually rouse a person enough to let him back under.

Just starting out: out by the Kern River.

Of course, the most memorable stories are the ones where something went wrong. The one predator that almost got him turned out to be the Good Samaritan just outside Kingman. This one spotted a cat with a halter and knew that had to be someone's dear delight, so set about capturing this flighty creature. He then did ask to make sure he wasn't getting ahead of himself. It sounded like a joke, the way he asked, and no, my cat is not lost. He's around here somewhere. It was a cold day and he'd probably be back in a minute or two. Yes, brown halter, you've clearly seen him. Not a lost cat. And then he went off to ask among the three RVs parked next to the bathroom. And I still hadn't seen the cat, who would only be out for half an hour in the chill breeze. I called him and looked about and then went running because the consequences of this seeming joke being true were bad. And there was my cat. My cat who doesn't talk to strangers. My cat who used to hide under the bed when someone walked by on the sidewalk a floor below. (Admittedly, we worked this out by giving treats to strangers to give to him.) Not a lost cat!

The setup early on in Mojave National Preserve.

Well, he did manage to become a lost cat shortly after in Quartzite. I arrived late the night before to go to a Geocaching event that morning and had grabbed a spot rather quickly nearby. He hadn't been out yet in the morning when I really needed a moment with the bushes and he said, "I'm going out too." I'd rather you didn't. "All the same, I will," and he was out. It was just barely getting light and as it did, noises were starting out all around. The look and sound of the whole place was changing minute by minute. I went to bring him in when I was done being out and I couldn't find him. I was sure a coyote spotted him going the other way and snatched him up, of course. I made many circles calling. Since this was the one day I had something to go to, I made my breakfast wondering if I'd actually be able to eat it and scanning the horizon every thirty seconds. Surprisingly, this vigilance paid off because I spotted a little yellow creature in the distance. I shouted and he started toward me, but then the RV between erupted with double barking from inside. I called again and turned off the gas on the cooking and called and went out to collect him calling all the way. Oh, such relief all around after about 1.5 hours of worry. I got to the event an hour late, but so what? Another at the event wasn't so lucky and their two cats had been missing for 3 days by then.

Baiting coyotes in the sunrise near Winterhaven.

It was a while before he again made me certain he'd been plucked away by coyotes. This time, it was near Joshua Tree and it wasn't a new place. I called him for bed and he didn't come. I circled around calling and checked back to see if he'd snuck in. He hadn't. I did this again, listening to not too distant coyotes have something. Still no cat. Around an even bigger, twice as long circle and finally came back to, "Where have you been? It's bedtime."

First snow of the year along Butler Wash in Bear's Ears.

Once, in Santa Fe, I lost him in the middle of the day and went searching for him, calling away. I eventually found him under the covers. He had managed to get under and without too much mussing of the blankets. It had taken him a while to figure out the trick of getting under without help. I managed to check the covers better before looking for him after that.

Unusually relaxed near Flagstaff. He almost always napped in the trailer. He got tired of this spot and was ready to go before I was.

In a small, official campground in Bear's Ears National Monument, I called him for bed and somehow there were two sets of eyes coming along. Which were his and what did the other pair belong to? Well, the slightly pinker ones belonged to the partial albino (as cats with points are actually) I was calling. The greener eyes behind them were a black and white cat that apparently lives there. He jumped up as if no one else was there. I spotted the cat a couple other times and once spotted an orange tabby.

Running from the snow, but it came some 700 feet lower than expected. Timmy wasn't a fan even though he's one of those cats with tufts of fur between his toes. After a couple tries, he walked around the white stuff. The tarps were great for rain but sagged a bit under this snow.

It was 13°F one night there (one of the 6 times his water bowl froze overnight) which seemed to be just fine for those cats. The coldest night was 9°F at Navajo National Monument (where he remained confined). There is nothing so sad as hearing a thirsty cat attempting to lap away at a frozen bowl, and that morning it was very nearly solid and it was hard to break it so he could get something.

Keeping up the energy for a hike.

But the stories aside, it was a lot of hanging out in the trailer and poking around. Not hunting, although I'm sure there's people who have seen some video supposedly of a cat on its own taking out animal after animal. It comes with the assurance that every cat does this. No, not every cat does this. Additionally, there are plenty of dogs that do. That might have been my sister's cat. She would extract hummingbirds from the air if they were so foolish as to get within 5 feet of her. I once had a cat that got fat every spring from digging up gopher babies. He brought lizards in once in a while, too. He wasn't a gifter, but the other cat was. Fortunately that cat wasn't a hunter and only ever gifted a couple things it got off the hunter. Timmy got a moth once. He even ate it. He looked to be keen on it. The next night there was a similar moth fluttering about. I asked, you going to get that? "No. Are you nuts?" He didn't want anything to do with it. He also got a sphinx moth once. His biggest catch ever! He had even stopped having much play by the time we got started with the travel. Okay, he did hunt a few greens down. Boy loved his greens.

Timmy is also uninterested in my benchmarks.

He got to hunting water too. I didn't really want him having the wild water, but "Found water is always better," he said. When I first brought him near a stream, he found it frightening. That particular stream was the one that we had to cross for the one backpacking trip. Later, I showed him the La Plata River, which he started drinking from. He would go down to one spot for a drink, then circle up and around and down to another spot for the rest of his drink.

Nearly the last picture of Timmy having a good snooze in a warm spot that's easier to get into than under the blankets. He still worked at under the blankets from time to time.

I always missed him when I headed out without him for a couple days. There's always been a little hole left. Now there's no chance to return and fill that hole back up. There's a few stories written at the time by clicking the "hiking cat" tag.