From October 10, 2010 to July 16, 2021, I had the honor and privilege of sharing my life with The Greatest Cat Who Ever Lived.

A Chance Encounter

We met on October 9, 2010, at the Progressive Animal Welfare Society in Seattle’s Greenwood neighborhood. PAWS was next-door to a theater, where a friend and I had attended a play. “Let’s go in and just look,” she said.

He was named “Ty” by the staff due to a bow tie pattern on the back of his neck. He was a bulging beast of a cat, spilling over all three sides of a wall-mounted shelf. The kennel card declared in underlined all caps, “BITER! Bit two volunteers!!!”

“They’ve got you all wrong,” I said, rubbing him under the chin. “I bet you’re a big old lover, aren’t you boy?” He looked me square in the eye and let out a long, vowel-y meow that sounded like a squeaky door hinge.

I said to my friend, “Get a load of this guy! He meows like a gangster. He looks like he’s wearing a coat that’s two sizes too small. He should be chewing on a stogie.”

“He reminds me of Boss Tweed,” I said, referring to the corrupt party boss and politician from Tammany Hall in New York City in the 1880’s.

“Congratulations, your cat just found you,” my friend replied.

I protested my friend’s observation and went home empty-handed. For two and a half years, I had been blissfully pet-free, following the deaths of my last two cats (RIP, Max and Oliver). I was in no way missing a litter box, and I traveled without need for arranging pet care. I wasn’t even remotely looking for an animal companion.

My first thought the next morning was that fat cat. According to the kennel card, he was about two years old and picked up as a stray, but no one had come looking for him. He had already been in the shelter for two months. Labeled a biter, it was unlikely he would find a home.

I went down to the basement to see what I still had left for taking care of a cat. I drove to Petco for litter, a litter box, and cat food, then on to PAWS. On the auspicious date of 10-10-10, I became Boss Tweed’s human.

Fatty Fatty Two-By-Four

Cats were free-fed at the shelter, and Boss Tweed weighed a whopping 21 pounds when I adopted him. I eventually got him down to a respectable 18 pounds.

On Thanksgiving morning one month after the adoption, I set the table for my guests coming that afternoon, including putting some butter out to thaw in time for the meal. I didn’t have a butter dish in the pattern of the china, so I set the stick, uncovered, on a matching plate on the dining table and went to the store for some last-minute items.

I returned to find The Boss Man sitting on my beautifully set table, his fat, hairy ass in the middle of a dinner plate, licking the butter stick, which was now concave on the top.  I removed everything and ran it all through the dishwasher before I reset the table, and there was one diarrhea-stricken kitty at my house for Turkey Day.

There were many ways that Boss Tweed was like a dog, including his ability to snatch food from humans. One day my friend Izzy and I were having chicken sandwiches for lunch. He set his sandwich down on the coffee table to check his blood sugar, and when he looked up, it was gone. Neither of us had heard or seen a thing.

I warned housesitters to leave no food out, likening Boss to a ravenous dog who could jump on kitchen counters. After one of my trips the housesitter said, “I didn’t think a whole tomato would be a problem!” Boss had knocked it off the counter, punctured the skin, and smeared it all over the kitchen floor.

I tried controlling Boss’s weight with an automatic feeder. I thought if portion-controlled food was given every couple of hours, he might metabolize it faster. Since I couldn’t always be home to feed him at those intervals, I bought the Fort Knox of feeders. This thing was stainless steel, heavy duty, tamper-proof, and held a full bag of dry food.

A little chime would sound, bringing Boss running for the little morsels that dropped down from the hopper through a chute and into a bowl five times per day. He often sat on top of the feeder and pawed at the chute for more, but this thing was foolproof.

Things worked out quite well for months, and Boss Tweed dropped another pound. But as you probably already know, foolproof things are only foolproof until they are not.

One morning I awoke to the sound of a faint but frantic beeping, which grew louder as I walked down the hall. The alarm was coming from the feeder, because it was on its side. Let me rephrase that. It had been shoved over. Its lid was completely off, and dry food cascaded from the opening down onto the floor like a cornucopia. Seated at the end of that kibble wave was The Boss Man, burping and licking his paws.

The feeder was anchored to the wall from then on.

Therapy Kitty

Boss Tweed moved through this world unafraid and curious about all things. He approached every living creature with a head held high, and zero hesitation.

A friend’s dog had been scratched by two cats as a puppy, and it was deathly afraid of them as a result.  My friend came to visit after I had surgery, and when her dog saw Boss through the window from the sidewalk, the dog screamed like a nine-year-old girl being stabbed to death. Boss stared at him blankly, unperturbed.

“Would you mind if we came over to get my dog accustomed to being around a cat?” she asked. Over the next several weeks, Boss’s calm presence slowly desensitized the pooch. When he finally made it inside the house without screeching after the third or fourth visit, Boss walked right up to him, even though he was wailing and desperately seeking traction on the hardwood floor.

Over time the dog learned to coexist with Boss in the same room without screaming, albeit it in opposite corners. Boss wanted to be buddies, but that proved to be a bridge too far!

Life On The Road

I didn’t know if Boss would live his best life on the road, so my plan was to give it two weeks, rehoming him if necessary. No less than ten hands went up among my friends to take him if it came to that; everyone adored The Big Boss Man.

For the first week he hid and yowled when we moved. By the second week he emerged and sat on the floor next to me on driving trips. By the third week he was up on the dashboard watching the world go by. He was a natural.

At campgrounds, traffic lights, parking lots and ferries, people stopped to point, smile and take photos of the cat on the dash who would fall onto his back, resting all four paws on the windshield, swiping playfully at their fingers on the glass.

Boss lived half of our lives together in a sticks and bricks, and the other half as a nomad.

Boss’s Soul Mate: Rocket

My last dog, Olive, barely tolerated Boss Tweed. When she died and I adopted Rocket and Pinkie, Boss finally found his furever buddy in The Rocket Man. For years Pinkie wanted no contact (that would eventually change – Boss wore her down),

but Rocket took to Boss immediately. Boss played with Rocket’s tail, chased him around the rig, and gave him so many tongue baths that I was surprised his little tongue didn’t fall off. Sadly Rocket never reciprocated; I bet Boss would have loved to have been the recipient of some tender grooming.

Boss Tweed’s San Antonio Vacay

Headed to Seattle for health care a few years ago, I left all three animals in the care of a Rover.com sitter for one week. Boss escaped her house and was MIA for over 48 hours. She and her family were worried sick, shouting his name and shaking a can of treats up and down her street. Nada.

I got to work finding him the best I could from Seattle, alerting the microchip company and calling nearby shelters. I recorded my voice calling for him and texted it to the sitter to broadcast from her phone as she scoured the neighborhood. Deep down I believed he was gone for good, not because he was dead, but because anyone but a fool would have scooped him up and taken him home. That cat was like a gold bar – rare, precious, and impossible to resist. And heavy.

On the third day, when the sitter was not specifically looking for him and was out walking the dogs, Boss emerged from under the neighbor’s porch.

Learning The Leash

During the COVID lockdown on Hilton Head Island, I wanted to tackle learning new things that would take some time to master, so I decided to leash train Boss Tweed. It took all of two days!

In order to walk three animals I usually leashed Boss to Pinkie because they were similar in size. Pinkie would give me a look like her mother just told her she had to take her younger sibling to the movies! Boss always took the lead, dragging Pinkie along.

For the last two years of his life Boss was the center of attention on our walks. Many campers stopped to pet him and took our photo while I camp hosted at Belfair State Park in Washington. He brought a smile to everyone he met.

Last Road Trip

Our final road trip was by car to the California coast, while Hunker Downs was transported by carrier. Boss sat up front with me mostly, but he often hopped in the back seat to curl up with the dogs. We spent our nights in hotel rooms, all four of us on the bed. He really was the best traveling kitty anyone could have.

The Final Seven Months

Tweedy was losing weight, yet he was more ravenous than ever. His stomach was always distended; he looked like he swallowed a football sideways.

He went from lovingly to obsessively licking, including inanimate objects, like the sofa; he licked the cushions so often that the fabric became fuzzy. His pupils sometimes took up the entirety of his eyes, and were slow to contract. He began pacing and meowing sadly at night.

The $650 test for Cushing’s Disease was negative. He got a UTI which we treated, but frequent UTIs are often the beginning of the end.

I waited for weeks for an appointment with a specialist. I was unable to stay with him for the exam due to COVID precautions, so I dropped him off and went to kill some time on State Street in Santa Barbara.

The doctor phoned a little while later, saying first that Boss was holding court at the hospital, making friends with every human and animal, even in his diminished state. Then she told me that her working diagnosis was dysautonomia, which was attacking Boss’s nervous system. He would eventually go blind.

I sat down in the middle of a public plaza and bawled my eyes out. I must’ve been quite a sight. Several people walked past but did not stop. I was grateful for that.

The doctor launched into additional diagnostic testing and medications that could be tried. I interrupted her mid-sentence. I asked about prognosis and whether treatments were palliative or curative. The news just kept getting worse. No cure. Thirty-five percent survival rate. Progressively worse symptoms, and of course, eventual blindness.

“Here’s what we’re going to do,” I said. “Pump him full of steroids and give me some pills to take with us – enough for a week or so. That’s about how long it will probably take for me to find a vet that will euthanize him at home.”

The vet made a point of meeting me in person on the sidewalk outside the hospital when I returned for Boss. “I wish more owners were like you,” she said.

“Then along with treatment options,” I said, “be upfront about no treatment being a viable and humane choice.”

It took two days for the Prednisone to kick in, and Boss returned to his old self, eating, playing, and cleaning Rocket. Steroids are a wonder drug for an animal’s (and some humans’) final days, but only for a short time, and I knew that.

I looked in earnest for a veterinarian that made housecalls, but the search became more frantic as the days flew by and no one was getting back to me, or were unavailable if they did reply. Death is a busy business.

I finally settled on a vet that would drive her van out to the campground, but she refused to come in my trailer, ostensibly due to COVID. However, I would be allowed in her van, as long as I was masked. I’ll let you figure that one out. It chapped my hide, and it was expensive to boot, but the cost mattered not one bit to me.

Saying Goodbye

When certain death looms at the end of seven days, the passage of time is simultaneously too brief and excruciatingly long. In the week leading up to his euthanasia I had difficulty taking Boss Tweed for a walk, not because he didn’t want to go, but because campers would stop us and ask to pet him and take photos. I burst into tears more than once. I regret not taking him out for a walk every single day that week, but I just couldn’t bear it.

On the last day, that final walk, I allowed him to meander for as long as he wished, sniffing each blade of grass and looking up at the birds in the trees.

Inside the vet’s van, Boss gave a familiar low growl at the administration of the sedative – the same warning he gave at every medical appointment that more-often-than-not dissuaded professionals from putting a thermometer up his ass. He was The Boss Man until the very end.

I stroked his fur and repeated that everything was going to be okay, more for my benefit than his. The second injection acted quickly. He shuddered two times and was still, his body limp, mouth open.

The vet encouraged me to take as much time as I needed, but I didn’t want to feel him turn cold under my hand. She asked if I wanted a clipping of fur, and I replied that I didn’t need it; I had all these wonderful memories I am now sharing with you all to remember him by.

Epilogue

Here’s to the cat branded a biter, but who never once bit me.

Boss, my El Jefe, had such a big personality. He has left a gaping hole in our lives that we are still feeling, six months on. A fellow camp host who is a painter added a memorial to him on my campground sign, and I love it; I smile whenever I see it.

I am weeping as I write this, but at least I am finally able to write it now. Until very recently I couldn’t share this news with all of you. It felt too permanent, too sad, too “end of an era.”

Will I get another cat? Probably not – not as long as I’m on the road. To be honest, I would never have sat down at a blank drawing board to plan a North American RV life and thought, “First, let’s get a cat!” Boss Tweed came on this journey with me because he was so remarkable.

Here’s a photo of him in 2020, on the tenth anniversary of the 10-10-10 adoption, and the look of indignity on his face says it all!

Thanks for sharing the loss with me. If you have any stories about Tweedy Pie, I’d love to hear them.

“Everyone thinks they have the best [pet]. And none of them are wrong.” W.R. Purche