One day in late 2004 I strolled into a nice-looking garden that turned out to have an office in it. By early 2005, the boss had decided that the office could have a cat and the person I’ll call ‘Primary Human’ volunteered to take me to the vet for shots and whatever else I needed. That was on Friday and she thought it wouldn’t be a good idea to take me back to the office over the weekend after I’d had shots and blood tests and I can’t remember what else, so she took me home with her. By Monday, she was mine. She negotiated with the owner of our house to take the ‘no pets’ clause out of the lease and I had a home. Then I needed a name. As a good-looking chocolate-colored guy, I needed a chocolate name. There’s a brand of Australian chocolate cookies called TimTams that are named after the horse that won the 1958 Kentucky Derby. So this Thai cat was named TimTam, after an American race horse, by way of Australian cookies. My house soon came to be known as ‘Villa TimTam’. And the good life began. Back in the day, I was a champion jumper – I had to be, so that I could sit on the highest place in every room to be sure that things were being done the way I wanted them. And when they weren’t, I would let Primary Human and Ms. Diamond know, in complete sentences and paragraphs, in purrfect English and Thai – totally bilingual. It didn’t take me long to train Ms. Diamond, who kept my house clean and would stay with me when Primary Human had to travel. The first time Primary Human came back from a trip, Ms. Diamond told her “Now I know who the boss is around here. And it isn’t you.” Miracles were my specialty, too. People who didn’t like cats liked me. Of course. A few years ago, I had a bad reaction to a new medication and had a real crisis – in a coma and on a respirator. Pulled off my biggest miracle and came out of it in a couple of days. Primary Human knew that every day from the day I came home from the hospital was a gift. It was great. She and Ms. Diamond both jumped to do whatever I wanted whenever I made a move or a sound. The good life rolled on again. Last year, something started going wrong. Primary Human took me to lots of doctors – I got seriously tired of that – tried everything and nothing worked. By the beginning of 2020, it was getting hard for me to jump up on the bed, so Primary Human started sleeping on the couch. When I couldn’t jump up on the couch any more, she made a bed for us on the floor. When it was my time, Primary Human and I were nose to nose – the way we used to sleep when I would put my head on the pillow beside hers – and she was scratching my neck (my favorite thing) and telling me she loved me. I know I was fiercely loved.

P Moore
Bangkok, Thailand