A Lost Cat

My Heart in a Tuxedo Butthead

In October, 2016—when I was 33—my then-girlfriend and I got our first animal together, and my first animal ever as an adult. We decided it was time to add to our little clan. We were living in a small house in El Cerrito, just north of Berkeley, in the Bay Area.

When we arrived at Berkeley Humane, we looked at many cats but it was the black-and-white Tuxedo, at the time named “Jasper” who we—or more accurately I should say EYE—fell in love with. Truth was he bit my then-girlfriend and licked my hand. I had chosen, or, rather, his gold eyes had chosen me. Despite the bite she thought he was beautiful and so we left with him that day.

We soon fell in complete love with him, of course. Recently I’d seen the movie Gladiator and loved it; the child of the queen’s name is Lucius. Ergo, Jasper morphed into Lucius. The name stuck. Lucius had entered our lives.

*

On January first, 2018—the day after my 35^th birthday—my girlfriend and I broke up after 4.5 years. We lived together. It was very painful, as losing someone you love always is, even if the relationship was highly dysfunctional by that point, and clearly deteriorating fast. We agreed that I’d keep Lucius. (Or Looshie or Looty, as we called him.) I just couldn’t imagine letting the feisty little butthead go. (And he was a butthead: He would routinely scratch, bite and headbutt us, but then, like some bipolar partner, he’d lick and love-up on you right after. He had lived his first four months of life on the “mean streets of Oakland.”)

The year 2018 was one of loneliness, random sex, hard work editing books for money—especially my former neo-Nazi-turned anti-hate client Christian Picciolini’s second book, Breaking Hate—paying off debts to my ex and saving up for my dream: Moving to New York City. Manhattan had always been my romantic writers’ dream, as it was for countless other writers over the past century and beyond. From Whitman to Cheever to Mailer to Sontag to Didion to Baldwin to Zadie Smith and Ta-Nehisi Coates and more, NYC was, for writers, Mecca. Always had been, probably always would be, a striated mix of culture, chaos, loneliness, anarchy, rudeness, creative inspiration, love, hate, sex, and violence. That was the NYC I craved.

March 26, 2019—after a four month wild love affair with a woman I met during three weeks in Mexico City; another long story—Lucius and I moved across country to NYC. Flying with him was not as hard as I’d suspected. I even got to cut the line. (And security had to feel his body checking for “bomb dust.”) He sat in his tiny green malleable crate right on my lap the whole flight.

*

After living in Manhattan for 2.3 years—Harlem and Lenox Hill—Lucius never quite loving the tiny shotgun 3^rd floor walkup apartments and all that boxed-in noise and the constant sirens, I flew with him to California for the first time in 18 months in June, 2021. He and I’d survived Covid together, alone and scared in East Harlem (130^th and 5^th Ave), where, during the Pandemic, violence had surged (I was chased multiple times and two men broke into my building and held up a tenant at gunpoint). And then Lenox Hill, East 70^th between First and York, the little narrow apartment across the street from the medical center, not far from the East River. Lucius never went outside. I talked with my folks via Zoom every week or two. Dad always had a terrible cough. I never asked.

Well, as many of you who’ve been reading my stuff for a while know: My father’s cough turned out to be cancer; stage-four Melanoma. Thus, what started as a summer trip and return to Manhattan, ended in me never returning to New York. Several good friends cleaned out my apartment and shipped my stuff (mostly books) across the land to Santa Barbara, where my parents had moved in 2020 from my hometown, Ojai. Lucius loved living in Santa Barbara. He climbed trees, roamed around the backyard, chased insects, ran along the stone walls, and once caught a bird by his wing. (I rescued the bird who was thankfully ok and flew off.)

Soon I got my own apartment in town ten minutes north of my folks’ house. Dad’s cancer journey was long and slow and felt like the thinnest onion layers being perpetually peeled back, this, now that, then this, etc. Lucius now had a whole 600 square-foot balcony to play on and he used it with relish; several times he climbed up onto the roof of the house in which I rented a studio. Eventually I constructed tall chicken wire fencing around the entire balcony railing, and I foiled his plans for escape. Prior to that he got out once for several hours and I almost died.

In summer 2022, I started writing on Substack and, most importantly, I met and fell in love with the woman who would become my wife, Britney. Thankfully, she had the opportunity to get to know my father before he died. She came over many times. Lucius had brought many smiles to my father’s face. Britney loved but was terrified of Lucius; he had a hard right hook, and long, tough talons for claws. (“He’s just expressing himself,” I’d always say.)

By January, 2023—almost at the five month mark of our relationship—I moved in with Lucius to Britney’s house in Lompoc, 50 minutes north of Santa Barbara off Highway 1. I’d never even heard of Lompoc, despite being born and raised only a couple hours south. It was a small, physically gorgeous agricultural town surrounded by lush, rolling green hills and mountains, and dirt fields which reminded me of the strawberry fields in Oxnard.

It was a big deal for Lucius to move in. It was the end of his isolation from other animals. Britney had two cats and a dog: A 14-pound, beautiful Siamese, and a gray shorthair, Klaus, plus her 13-year-old Border Collie, Franky. Franky was fine, but her two cats did not get along with Lucius, and vice versa. We figured we’d solve this dilemma at some point.

In the spring we got engaged. I remember driving south down to Santa Barbara and celebrating with my parents. Dad schlepped out to a Mexican restaurant—actually the place Britney and I’d had our first date at!—and we clinked our glasses together in joy. Dad was cold and looked weak that night, but he seemed positive.

We didn’t know if Dad would make it to our wedding. Or to Father’s Day in later June, 2023. In the end he made neither. He died at 4pm on the nose on June 2^nd, peacefully in his bed. We’d spent 23 months caring for the man, and I’d had the awesome privilege of getting to know my father on a much deeper level than I’d ever imagined possible. Lucius walked me through all of it, as he had with everything else. He was always there, warm and comforting with his easy, unconditional love. He wasn’t like people; I could trust him completely.

On October 14^th we got married at my mom’s house with my family and her immediate family present. After that we flew to Morocco for two weeks. In November we had the official reception ceremony at a classy venue on State Street in Santa Barbara.

*

Britney’s two cats are outdoor animals: They come and go as they please, using the dog door. Sometimes, Kittie Bear (the Siamese) crashes through the dog door with a lizard, mouse or rat in his mouth and Britney screams to high heaven. (And I dispose of it.) Lucius, however, is indoor only. Perhaps it’s selfish on my part—my wife thinks it is—but I just can’t let him go free. I do put him in our outdoor “catio” connected to our bedroom window, and also our “dog-run” which gives him some space to be outside behind chicken wire, but I just haven’t been able to let him fully roam free. I don’t think I could handle losing him. (Which of course I one day will.)

Sometimes, I do allow him—supervised—to do “rollies” around the backyard area for a while. I watch and protect him and make sure he doesn’t escape. At various times in El Cerrito and Santa Barbara he did get out briefly and both times terrified me. My mom called him an “escape artist” and she wasn’t wrong.

*

Recently (5/26), while Britney was at work, her father stopped by to loan us his cooler which we planned to use for her 18-year-old son’s baseball celebration in town. Stupidly, I spoke with her dad for probably twenty minutes outside with the front door of the house open behind me. What I’d somehow totally forgotten was that Lucius was in the living room. (I’m usually very careful about this.)

It didn’t hit me until about two hours after her dad left. I realized Britney’s cats weren’t there, and that the dog-door was closed, which I only did when Lucius was inside. (Since we have to keep him safely inside and apart from her cats. We also have a separating gate in the hallway to keep the cats apart which reminds me a little of San Quentin Prison.) I jumped up and immediately started searching for Lucius. He’s a big ball of long black-and-white fur but he’s actually not very big, all of 9 pounds currently. In other words: He can hide like the best of em. But I looked and looked, everywhere I could imagine, and: No Lucius.

I texted Britney in a semi-panic. She said what I also hoped: He must be inside the house somewhere. But by that evening—he’d been missing since somewhere around 11am—we knew for sure that he was gone. He must have silently escaped when I was chatting with her dad: My back had been foolishly facing the door, her dad facing me down at the bottom of the brick stairs.

Panic set in. As a 41-year-old man with no kids, Lucius really was—laugh if you must—“like my son.” Yes. I know: There’s a vast chasm between a cat and a kid. I get it. I agree. You’re right. No question. That said: He was what I had. We’d shared everything together. He’d been there for me through my breakup, through NYC, through Covid, through my father’s cancer and death, through love and marriage.

Little Butthead.

I searched for him a little that day and evening. I went to bed but hardly slept. I couldn’t even read, and that’s meaningful for me. I fell asleep for a little here and there but, for the most part, I was up most of the night. All the horrors ran through my psyche: Lucius being hit by a car; being stolen; being tortured; being scared and injured; getting lost; etc. You name it, I imagined it. The woe of the Artist is asking the inner question, What If. My imagination, of course, ran wild, across vast interior wilderness vistas and deserts in my mind.

The next day I got up early and was able to read and caffeinate for a while. Then Britney and I went looking for him, calling his name circling the area. Nothing. Finally we returned and Britney started her routine of cleaning the entire house all day. I tried to get some things done but couldn’t think so I texted some friends about Lucius and then went out looking again. After a while I decided to go on a long walk and put my air pods in and listened to Sartre’s existentialist novel, Nausea. I slowly calmed. I’d put in 8 miles total for the day. I was sweaty, gross and tired. I felt half-hungover from worry and lack of sleep.

I’d checked the alley behind our house several times—so many choice places to hide—but I tried it once more on my way back from the long walk. Several people were out in the alley. One, a woman who evidently knew Britney, told me she’d keep a lookout for him. We’d already posted photos and details about him on several Facebook animal groups and other places, including the shelter. (He is microchipped.) Ditto Nextdoor.com. So the word was out. I’d also spoken with several neighbors about it, including our immediate neighbors on both sides of us.

Strolling further down the alley, the direction of our house, I saw a young guy in his twenties, thick, tall, in good shape, messing around with a motorcycle roped onto the bed of a small white Toyota pickup truck. He had dark medium-length hair and a brown baseball hat on backwards. I said hello and we chatted. I told him about Lucius. He said he’d had some cats recorded on his “Ring” security night camera lately and in fact had seen a black cat on the Ring just last night.

No way.

He got onto his phone, scrolled around, and soon was playing the footage. And there he was!!! I couldn’t believe it. There was no question it was him. In fact, he was on there twice: Once at 2am and once at 4am. There was no question it was him: Thick fur, big bulbous tail, all black with a black/white face and white paws. In one of the videos he even turned and looked briefly right into the camera. It was Lucius, clear as day.

I couldn’t believe it.

We exchanged names and numbers and he texted me the videos and he said he’d keep his eyes out for Lucius. I was grateful. The Little Butthead now made me feel less worried and more annoyed; he’d looked like he was having fun in those videos! And I’m sure he was. A few times I must admit the thought crossed my mind: Maybe I should just let him be an outdoor cat. But then I thought of the gnarly, bloody fights Klaus had gotten into over the months, the war wounds, the being gone all day and even sometimes all night, the risks from cars, people and mountain lions, etc.

No fucking way.

*

Since the videos had showed him at 2am and 4am—and since most cats are nocturnal and don’t get wild until the wee hours—I figured I’d get an old plastic chair, some warm clothes, some water and my phone and just wait in the alley for the Butthead to come. (Not the safest thing to do, hanging alone at night in that alley, but I didn’t care at that point.)

I did just that, waiting until around 9:30 pm before getting very tired and cold. I finally decided I’d had enough. I grabbed my stuff and went through the backyard, leaving the big back gate open a foot and Lucius’ litter box and a bowl of food a ways inside the gate to try to lure him. I entered the house through the kitchen back door, chugged some water, peed, peeled all my layers off, yawned, set my alarm for 2:15am (I’d get back up then and look again in the alley; maybe I’d get lucky), and laid down.

It took me an hour to at last crumble into a gray, anxious sleep. The last thing I remember thinking was, I can’t believe he’s gone. What if he just never returns? What will I do? I can’t lose that little punk. He’s my son.

And then I groggily woke an hour later. Snatching my phone I saw that it was just 11:30PM. It was dark and quiet out. Cool May air blew in through the open window across the catio. Kittie Bear stood perched up on the dresser in front of that open window, eyeing something outside. Or was he? Sometimes he gazed at nothing, or even seemed subsumed by…what turned out to be nothing.

I had a feeling though. I peeled the covers off and, naked, stalked quietly across the room to Kittie. When I pushed my head passed Kittie’s face, he growled into my ear loudly. Then I noticed his fur was up in some biological, physiological response. Finally I grabbed Britney’s phone sitting on the dresser—I’d left my phone on my little bedside table—and pressed the flashlight on, jutting it out and spraying the light back and forth into the backyard.

There was Lucius!

I couldn’t believe it. He was about thirty feet away, hunkered down in the dirt and low, recently trimmed grass like some Army platoon soldier. Not bothering to put pants on—naked minus unlaced running shoes—I hobbled through the prison gate in the hallway and across the kitchen, making sure to open the back door quietly. I needed to be very, very careful. Lucius was fast and easily spooked.

In the kitchen I’d snagged a bowl of cat food. It was full. I hoped he was hungry. I was relying on his lack of hunting skills. Flashing the light against his black thick fur and gold intense eyes, I shook the food bowl and silently—or near silently—spider-man stepped slowly closer and closer and closer.

When I was about three feet away, I gently called his name, shook the dish and placed it on the dirt. Without missing a beat he came towards it and started eating. I immediately snatched him up, nearly screaming in joy. I’d caught the bastard!!!

I brought him into the kitchen and flipped the light on, closing the door. The other cats were in the office for the night. I placed the food dish on the kitchen counter and watched him eat greedily. He was clearly starving. He was covered in little brush stickers everywhere; as he ate I tried to gingerly pry some of them off his furry body. He wasn’t as dirty as I’d suspected he would be. I gazed at him in awe, shocked that I’d actually captured him, that he’d actually returned. Food had driven him home. Or maybe he missed me. Or both. Probably it was mainly the food.

It may be a funny and ironic—if not absurd—comparison, but the whole fiasco made me feel deep empathy for my mother. All those years of my wild teenage drinking, going out in dangerous situations for days at a time, getting arrested, getting into fights, blacking out, she not knowing where I was or if I was anything like safe. It’s a terrible feeling, that not knowing. A part of you always expects the worst. And of course the hardest part is, whether pet or child, there is so little you can really do in the end. They are who they are and they do what they do. Nothing stopped me when I was young: Not cops, not jail, not blacking out, not violence, not serious danger, not multiple-roll car crashes, not being broke, not reprimands; nothing. It was only when I fully hit a personal spiritual bottom that I realized what I’d become and found true change.

Not all of us go that route, thank God. And Lucius isn’t an alcoholic (haha), or, of course, a human being. But it made me face that thing in myself in a deeper way than I ever had before. For so long I’d been The Kid, battling my mom and “Society.” But I wasn’t that kid anymore. I was 41, sober almost 14 years, a spiritual and symbolic parent if nothing else, a grown, married man. I have learned many things from Lucius over the years, not least of which is love, compassion, forgiveness, letting go, faith and acceptance.

But this might have been the biggest lesson of all. That lesson being: When push comes to shove, people are who they are and they do what they do. All you can do on your end is put out the food and hope they come.