Fun fact: Some cat species, such as cheetahs and cougars, can purr like domesticated cats, but lions and tigers can’t purr. They roar instead.
“No more cats!” That’s what my husband Fred told the kids and me. “Three cats are more than enough.” My daughter Summer and I just looked at each other and grinned. Yeah… like you can ever have too many cats! Then again, we weren’t planning on adding any new cats just then, so the issue didn’t seem worth debating. But that was before Sam came on the scene.
My friend Denise and I had stopped for dinner at a country-western pub on the outskirts of Portland, and on our way in a black-and-white cat came flying past to perch on the hood of a nearby car.
What can I say? I’m a sucker for cats, and this one was oozing with charm. I walked right over and scratched him behind the ears. His purr kicked into high gear and he leaned against my fingers.
I wondered where he came from; there were no houses nearby, just an empty field on one side and a tree farm on the other. I picked him up and gave him a warm snuggle. The cat burrowed his face into my neck in obvious ecstasy. “It’s a shame he’s so unfriendly,” I laughed. I put him down on the sidewalk, and Denise and I went inside.
During dinner, I found myself thinking about the little guy outside in the cold, obviously hungry for attention. I asked the waitress if she knew anything about the young cat in the parking lot. She told us that someone had abandoned a mother cat and her four kittens in the field next door. The restaurant staff had fed and looked after them until the kittens were weaned, and then, one by one, the mother cat and the kittens had been adopted, except for the one outside.
He was still there when we went outside, sitting on the hood of another car. If cats could smile, he was smiling his face off, and we could hear him purring from six feet away. I scooped him up, said goodnight to Denise and headed for my van. Putting him on the passenger seat, I belted myself in and prepared for him to freak out when I started the car. He didn’t. He stretched languidly across the seat with his front paws curled beneath him and looked expectantly at me. His expression was clear. “Home, James!”
When we got to the house, I picked him up from his comfy position and wrapped him in my coat. As I walked into the family room where the gang was watching TV, our son Aaron looked up and, seeing a tail dangling from beneath my jacket, said, “What in the Sam Hill is under your coat?” giving my hitchhiker the perfect name.
“It’s our new kitty — Sam Hill!” I announced, opening my coat with a flourish and hoping Sam’s cuteness would win Fred over.
It did. Sam grinned his irresistible cat grin, Fred groaned and muttered, but before the evening was over, he, along with the kids, became a Sam fan. The other cats hissed at him once or twice, but then, like the rest of us, fell under his spell. The kitty without a home had found a family.
The first item on Sam’s agenda was to establish his number-one rule: No closed doors! He promptly set about teaching himself to open said doors, which, fortunately for him, were equipped with latch-type handles. Within a few weeks, he had set off the burglar alarm in the house three times and shocked unsuspecting guests who were using the bathroom.
The laundry room, off the TV room, was where we kept the litter box, but when the dryer was running, it was hard to hear the television, so we always closed the door. Sam didn’t approve — he’d open it. We’d close it, he’d open it, and so on. It was through this little idiosyncrasy that we discovered another aspect of our endlessly entertaining boy: He was apparently psychic. When the other cats found the door to the laundry room closed, they would sit, staring patiently at the portal until, only minutes later, Sam, from wherever he had been sleeping in the house, would come and open the door for them. Eventually, Fred changed the handles to regular doorknobs.
All creatures, two-legged or four, were friends in Sammy’s book. People were great, cats were cool, and dogs were dandy. He didn’t even bat a whisker when I brought home a dwarf rabbit named Bunny Jean. Before a week was out, they were best buddies, chasing each other around the family room. We had a sheepskin rug in front of the fireplace. Sam would dive under it, every part of him covered except his nose, and then wait patiently until Bunny Jean came hopping by. When he pounced, the two would roll around on the carpet, wrestle and play hide-and-seek until one or the other finally collapsed into a nap. They were infinitely more captivating than most of the television shows.
Every day, it seemed, we would discover a new component to our Sam’s repertoire of personality quirks. One afternoon when I was working around the house, I heard Sam meowing loudly. He rarely did this, so when it continued for quite some time, I got a little concerned and went to see what was going on. Following his voice, I found him in the kitchen, sitting on the floor, looking up intently at and having a heartfelt conversation with… the oven. He glanced over at me, then went on chatting. When he was finished with his tète-à-tète, he smoothed a whisker and headed to the sofa for a nap. Off and on after that, I would find him in the living room having the same dialogue with the drapes. He was a nut, but never boring.
Samuel William Hill was cherished by our family for nine wonderful years. These days, he’s hanging out in heaven, keeping the angels amused, opening doors for them, I’m sure, and waiting for his family to come home.
~Tina Wagner Mattern
