Seeking Silverdale and Central Kitsap

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Almost 15 years ago, in June of 1994, my son Daniel chose a playful orange tabby from a group of kittens at the Kitsap Humane Society’s display at the Silverdale Pets Mart store. It was a sad time in our household. Just a few months earlier, the cat I adopted when I started my first job had died. And that was followed within a short time by the miscarriage of what would have been our family’s second child.

That orange tabby kitten brought life back into our home. Charlie was named after Charlie Anderson, the title character of a children’s book about a cat that my son’s third-grade class had read shortly before. 

As a kitten, Charlie would seek comfort in the crook of my neck on my left shoulder. He had a sweet disposition and an open personality. Rather than running straight along his flanks, his tiger stripes encircled his sides so his markings were like bulls-eyes on each side. His tail had a perpetual curl, unlike any cat I’d ever had before. And he ate like the cartoon cat Garfield and grew to be an 18 pounder who looked even bigger.

After our two older cats died, Charlie became king of the house. He staked out his favorite spot in a basket on the shelf under the picture window in our bedroom, where the sun would warm him all morning. 

Every night when we’d go to sleep, he would start out with us on the bed, a heavy lump between my feet. He’d leave sometime in the night to make his rounds and “protect” the house, but as we’d stir into waking for the morning, he’d come back to us, often curling up on my wife’s pillow right next to her head. 

He was a talker, too. He’d let you know when he wanted something. He’d protest loudly being put in the car, since he knew that most likely meant he was heading for the vet’s office. And if they’d have to take him in the back to do a test, you could hear him meowing from the front of the vet’s office until he was returned to us.

But he’d save his loudest protests for when his automatic feeder would begin to run out of food. Even if there was still plenty of food in the feeder, if he could see even a tiny bit of the bottom of the bowl, he’d meow at us, following us around the house, until we refilled it. 

Charlie loved running water. He much preferred drinking from a slowly running faucet to drinking from his water bowl. It was a regular morning ritual that he would jump onto our bathroom counter as we were getting ready for work and meow until we turned a faucet on to a trickle so he could crouch down in one of our sinks to lap the water up as it came from the fixture. The shower was another question — I think the rush of water scared him. But as soon as we would turn the shower off, he’d appear outside the shower door waiting for us to emerge so he could help us dry off by licking the water off our ankles and lower legs.

Like many cats, Charlie normally didn’t appreciate the toys he would get on Christmas day. He much preferred to play in the mounds of wrapping paper and boxes that would pile up on the floor. There wasn’t a Christmas since 1993 without at least one photo of Charlie playing in the wrapping paper.

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