A surprise gift
Marsha and I were married in November of 1995, so her birthday the following March was the first one we celebrated together as a married couple. Before we joined our accounts together, I always felt like I could simply throw money at a gift. Now that any money I spent on a gift was spending her money too, I felt like I had to get her something she couldn’t buy on her own.
Surprisingly, she had floated the idea by me once that it’d be fun to have a cat. However, I immediately shut down the idea. As a child, I always grew up with and loved our cats, but I had severe allergies and spent most of my childhood on serious allergy medication. Marsha was understanding of my desire to breathe freely (😜), and never brought up the idea again. So getting us a cat was my great idea for her birthday!
So I went to the Humane Society the day before her birthday and selected Hank. He was a short-haired black-and-white cat, unusually clean and active compared to the others there. I expressed my interest, found a beanie baby that looked just like him, and put it in a box with a bow on top to present to Marsha the next day.
Marsha was touched but also reassured me we didn’t have to go through with it. But I had already picked the cat and suggested we simply go check him out.
The visit did not go the way I expected. While Hank was affectionate and rubbing against me, he really didn’t pay much attention to Marsha. The chemistry just didn’t seem to be there at the time. So rather than force me to put up with allergies, she decided it would be better to just go home without him.
The next morning, the two of us were standing side by side at the double sinks in our bathroom. I was about to head out for a business trip. Seeing my reflection in the mirror, Marsha noticed a slight smirk on my face. When she asked what I was thinking, I said, “Poor Hank. He might actually get euthanized because he didn’t suck up to you.”
I was mostly joking. Hank was so clean and lively. I just felt sure that someone would pick him out the way I had, so I wasn’t really worried about him. I did feel bad knowing that not every cat in the facility would be so lucky, but I didn’t at all doubt that Hank would get adopted.
We were still newlyweds then, so we were still at the phase where we’d talk every night when I traveled on business. (That ritual did not last!) Marsha never mentioned Hank in any of our nightly calls. Still, when I got home and opened the front door, Hank was there to greet me. After our conversation the morning I left, Marsha went back to the Humane Society to pick up Hank, feeling guilty. She kept the whole thing quiet to surprise me, and was I surprised!
New experiences
Marsha had never owned a cat before. I laughed when I saw that she bought him a cat bed and a scratching post. The cats I grew up with slept and scratched wherever they pleased, mostly on the furniture. I told Marsha I never had a cat that would use either one. Hank was the exception. He loved his bed and shredded several scratching posts over the years. Of course, having the bed and scratching posts never stopped him from sleeping with us or wrecking the furniture, too.
One lesson we learned was the need to take the cat from adoption straight to the vet to get rid of fleas. Hank had a pretty bad case of them, so we did have to rid both him and the condo of fleas shortly after bringing him home.
The good news is that my allergies didn’t turn out to be too bad with Hank. His short hair helped. I also learned that bathing cats is totally the move. Hank didn’t like getting wet, blow-dried, and having to lick himself for a long time afterwards. However, once all of that was over, he was always very affectionate with me. I believe he liked being clean and appreciated my help, even if he didn’t enjoy the process. Bathing Hank became my job, and it stayed my job for the rest of his life.
He was also always hungry. Our vet told us his weight should top out at eleven pounds, which meant keeping him on a strict diet. Unlike other cats I had known, Hank never nibbled. He ate all the food in his bowl in one sitting.
Hank was smart in the ways that count. Back then, we kept chlorine tablets in our toilet tanks, and we always kept the toilet lids closed. A friend staying with us didn’t know that rule and left a toilet lid up. Curious Hank must have had a drink. He threw up afterward, but he did it on the tile floor rather than the carpet or the furniture. We were relieved to have such an easy cleanup.
Making room for babies
In those early years, Hank always followed us from room to room like a dog. Before our daughters were born, we had plenty of time and energy to play with him. That changed when Marsha was pregnant with our older daughter. In preparation for our new baby’s arrival, Hank loved curling up in the bassinet and settling into the car seat stroller, as if he were testing them out. Marsha’s pregnancy seemed to change him a little, too. Perhaps he picked up on something different about her, or perhaps he sensed that he was about to lose his place as the center of attention.
Hank made his feelings known to us the day we brought our older daughter home. He had peed on my side of the bed, something he had never done before and never did again. I spent part of our first evening home with our new baby at the coin laundry, washing all of our bedding. I think Hank made a one-time statement.
Whatever grievance he had, it didn’t last. From then on Hank was our older daughter’s buddy. He loved sleeping near her as a baby and kept it up when she was a toddler.
By the time our younger daughter arrived, we were fully absorbed in raising two kids. We didn’t play with Hank nearly as much, and the girls had each other for company. Hank was still part of the family, but I could see him changing as he slipped further into the background of a busy household.
Hank finds his person
When we moved out of our house in 2001, we shut Hank in the powder room so the movers could leave the front door open. In the chaos of the day we forgot about him. Somehow he figured out that he should climb into the sink to relieve himself, and he saved us a great deal of cleanup then, too.
In 2001 we moved to Seattle, settling in Newcastle, about six miles from Marsha’s mother, Nori, in South Bellevue. Marsha’s dad passed away shortly after we arrived, and we saw Nori frequently in those years.
Hank still didn’t get the attention he once had, and I worried that he wasn’t as happy as he could be. Around that time a coworker of mine mentioned that she really wanted a cat. She was single, and I began to wonder whether Hank would be better off in a quiet home with one person who could make him the center of her world again. I floated the idea of giving him to her. At the time, Marsha agreed this might be best, too.
Nori would not hear of it. She told Marsha we could not simply give up a member of our family. That settled the matter, and Hank stayed with us. Looking back, I find it a little funny that the person who insisted Hank belonged with us was the one he would eventually choose.
At one point we considered moving to a different neighborhood close by, and we put our house on the market. While we showed it, we asked Nori to keep Hank. I don’t think she ever meant to keep him. She was simply doing us a favor.
But Hank was a warm and friendly cat who liked to follow people around, and Nori’s life had grown quieter since Marsha’s dad died. Marsha’s brother, a truly wonderful human, had moved back in with her, but this was long before working from home was common. His job involved a lot of travel, and between work and his close circle of friends he was often out. That left Nori and Hank with a great deal of quality time together.
The house never sold, so we took it off the market and stayed put. When it came time to bring Hank home, Nori was noticeably reluctant to give him back. Some time later we decided to move back to California so I could join Barracuda Networks. We told Nori that renting would be much easier without a cat, and she graciously agreed to do us the “favor” of keeping him.
Hank lived with Nori from around 2004 until 2010, and he became the center of her attention in a way he hadn’t been with us since before the girls were born. She played with him at 10 p.m. on the dot every night. She grew cat grass and cut it so he could have a little “salad” with his meals. She refused to vacuum while he was napping. She also felt sorry for him on the strict diet we had kept him on, and the eleven-pound cat soon settled in closer to fourteen. He seemed perfectly content with the trade.
The clearest sign of how happy he was had to do with the door. When Hank lived with us, he was always looking for a way to sneak outside. Once he moved in with Nori, he never tried again. I think he understood that his job was to be right there with her.
We didn’t lose touch with him. Every summer, until club sports took over the girls’ schedules, Marsha brought them up to Bellevue for a month. Marsha and the kids spent plenty of time with Hank. We spent holidays there, too, and whenever I visited, bathing Hank was still my job.
Hank’s final weeks were not easy. He developed feline diabetes, and in 2010, as we understood it, complications from the disease left Nori and Marsha’s brother with the hard decision to put him down. Nori was 80 at the time, and afterward she never wanted another pet. She told us she didn’t want anyone else to die on her again. What began as a birthday present I hoped Marsha couldn’t buy for herself turned into a lifetime with a cat who belonged to all of us, and who, in the end, found his way to the person who could give him the most.
AI disclosure: I used AI tools during the drafting and editing process to help clarify structure and language. All ideas, judgments, and final wording are my own.