Celebrating the life of Oliver

It is with a heavy heart that we announce that the world-famous boat cat Oliver has passed away. Instead of grieving, we want to honor him by celebrating his life, always full of joy and hedonistic pleasures (well, except during those rough passages that the poor guy had to endure).

We found Oliver in a State Park by the Sacramento River. I took the car one morning to drive from our campsite to a nearby windsurfing spot, while Kathy and the kids stayed in the campground. I almost run over a diminutive, helpless black cat and I said to myself, “uh-oh, I hope they don’t see it.” When I came back they were petting and feeding the cat who’d soon be known as Oliver. The girls obviously wanted to adopt him, so we made a deal: if he was still with us by the end of the following day we’d bring him home. The next day we all went swimming and when we came back I was relieved not to see the cat, thinking he’d likely reunited with his mother. But then someone noticed a lump under the tent floor, and that lump became part of the family. Twelve years later his kidneys gave up. The vet said a month ago that according to the blood test, Oliver shouldn’t have been alive. But no one notified him, so he kept climbing trees and bringing live mice to our bed in the middle of the night, happy to be back to his homeland. Until he could no more.

I’m not sure Oliver was ever aware that he was a cat. His feline instincts did show up from time to time, but he developed an unusual personality for a cat. For instance, the way he followed us around the house was a lot more dog-like, although he did attempt to disguise it. If we went out to do some gardening in the front yard, he’d soon show up there. If we then moved to the back yard, he would later surreptitiously appear there, not really looking at us, but very aware of us. He seemed to say “I’m not following you, ok? It just happens that I want to be right here, right now”.

His canine persona also turned up when Kathy and I rowed back to Ñandú at the end of a day out. He’d come out to the deck to welcome us, almost wagging his tail in a mixture of relief and happiness. The sentiments quickly turned into recrimination, though: “you are late for dinner!” He meant, of course, his dinner.

Speaking of food, Oliver wouldn’t accept anything that wasn’t packaged and clearly labeled as cat food. He showed absolute disdain for anything we ate, which was quite convenient, actually, since we never had to protect our food from him. Being the sophisticated cat he was, he wouldn’t eat his meals straight. Noooo, that would have been too ignoble. He had to “prepare” his meals. Using his paw as a spoon he’d add water from the water bowl, stir, and only then proceed to enjoy his gourmet meal.

Oliver always was fond of water, and not only as a food ingredient. At home he would patiently wait inside the bath tub until someone noticed and opened the faucet to a trickle of water that he’d use to wash himself. As a boat cat in the heat of the tropics he demanded proper showers. He would have happily taken five a day, but with the scarcity of fresh water we had to restrict him to the same standards as the human crew: at most one shower a day.

Our cat was very clear about rights, but fuzzy about obligations. As a natural predator, he could have easily contributed his share to the community by keeping mice out of the house. Instead he brought them in. And when presented with the one chance to capture one, he’d just alternately look at the scared rodent and at me, puzzled and annoyed, as if asking “You woke me up for this? What do you expect me to do?”

Oliver has now joined mother earth buried in his favorite kind of place: a grassy spot in is homeland, California (far enough from his least favorite place, the ocean). Rest in peace, Oliver. You will be sorely missed.