It’s International Eat a Tasty Animal for PETA Day.

Go ahead. I’m having dairy for breafkast, and meat for dinner, which will be in the company of all six members of the G. family.

Join us. Well, from wherever you are, not at the restaurant. It’s not big enough for all of us.

The title to this post is a lie. There’s actually an enormous hole in my life, not just a Tig-sized one. For the past eleven years, I had an orange, fluffy, loving goofball in my life. Every day that I was home, Tig was at my feet, under my feet, on my feet, around my feet, near my feet—his presence was known. Gracie spends hours on her own every day. She’s absolutely fine sleeping upstairs and coming down only when she’s hungry or wants attention. Tig was my shadow. Tig generally slept upstairs when I wasn’t home, and when he heard me come through the door, he’d be off my bed in a flash and walking slowly down the stairs, literally blinking the sleep out of his eyes.

Today would have been Tig’s eleventh birthday.

I want my Tig back.

I want the cat that followed me everywhere. If I went upstairs, he went upstairs. When I went to the bathroom, Tig followed me into the bathroom. And jumped up on the sink to drink from it while I needed to wash my hands. And complained when I pushed him away from the faucet. If I neglected to pay enough attention to him, he would rear up on his hind legs and rest his paws either on the soap dish or on my back. When I opened the medicine cabinet, he felt it was his duty to investigate it. When the closet was open, he leaped onto the shelf as soon as I turned my back. If I took a bath, he climbed on the side of the tub and meowed until I got out. When I took a shower, as soon as the water went off, he’d push the door open and come into the bathroom. Unless he felt like scaring me half to death by climbing onto the side of the tub and sitting there, without my knowledge, until I yanked back the shower curtain and saw Tig.

Back when I lived in Montclair, Tig’s kitty condo was near the door. “Come say goodbye,” I’d tell him as I left. He’d leap up onto the top of the condo for a goodbye skritch. He was generally the last thing I saw as I left my apartment, and the first thing I saw coming home. He knew the sound of my car, and ran to the window or the door when he heard it. Ran out the door more often than not, but then came right back in again to be picked up for a “snug” and a hello. That’s a snug in the picture in this post. Mostly. It’s the last picture taken of my boy, less than an hour before Tig left me forever.

I work from home four days a week. Tig went in and out dozens of times a day when I was home. He loved that I was home. It meant he got to go outside whenever he wanted, and that he could be around me 24 hours a day instead of only 14. Before and after naptime (around ten in the morning until midafternoon), Tig was in and out and in and out and in and out. Or he’d sleep in the kitchen chair next to the one I sit in. Or on the shelf, or the kitty condo—but nearly always in sight or in reach. When he got sick, he was always nearby. Even when he didn’t sleep in my bedroom, he slept upstairs in the office. On his last night on earth, he came into my bedroom one last time—because he knew I would make it better. Somehow, someway, he trusted me to make the pain go away.

I want my Tig back. And since I can’t have him, I have changed my mind. I don’t care that Gracie wants to be an only cat. I don’t care that she’s going to fight with a new cat. Gracie is boring. She doesn’t want to play. She doesn’t follow me around. And she hates being picked up.

I want a new orange goofball, preferably a Maine Coon mix, preferably a kitten. Male.

I need to repair that hole in my life. I want a new Tig.

Seriously. If any of my readers are within some kind of driving distance of Richmond, and hear about an orange Maine Coon mix, or even a purebred, I want it. Not an old, sick cat. I can’t bear that again. A baby. One that I can raise as my third Tigger. I’d like to get two, but I think that would be too much while Gracie is still around. And I’m not waiting until she’s gone.

I’ve had an orange cat named Tigger since 1983. My first Tig was a bright orange, long-haired boy who loved everyone and who sat in my lap the second I sat down, anywhere. I had him for thirteen and a half years. The second one, well, you’ve read all about him. Time for the next generation of Tig.

Time for new Tigger stories.