Over the course of my life, I’ve had many a cat. (Or, you know, the cats had me.) but, I think the strangest one HAD to have been Superman.
I know what you’re thinking, “He’s a comic book geek, so he named him Superman.” This is factually untrue.
Well, not the part about me being a comic book geek, that part is very true, but I didn’t name him.
At this point in my awesome life, I was living at Kent State, going to school, but I would come back to see my beloved Mom, because I loved her and didn’t wanna do my laundry in the building I was living in.
So, I was helping her pick out a new cat, and this little black and white tuxedo guy kept jumping at me. In classic Mom fashion, she said, “Oh! He’s like Superman!” because he was jumping over a fence in a single bound.
Of course, we got him. (along with a big fuzzy guy we called Jeffrey, who actually had a goatee but he’s another story) and then she noticed he also had a shape on his chest that looked kind of similar to the Superman symbol, so the Superman name just kinda stuck.
Superman, the cat, however, was more like Lex Luthor than Superman. I was like the Superman in this situation, for trying to always be nice, and he was like Lex, because he was always trying to figure out ways to kill me.
Don’t get me wrong, I LOVED, and still do love that cat. But when he wanted to play, he could play rough!
One of my most cherished memories is the time I was going to be the Best Man at my best friend’s wedding. (Yes, Superman did somehow involve himself in this even though he was not on the guest list.)
I had developed a small wart on my hand. I, honestly, don’t remember how. I had never had one before. But, then, Superman took it upon himself to scratch it open, so I bled on my hand like crazy, just a couple weeks before the wedding and had to spend the event with my hand wrapped up like the Mummy’s hand in the Mummy’s Hand because, apparently, blood spreads warts. ( Consider that a public service announcement.)
I also had to work at the Dairy Queen with my wart infested mummy hand, but, it remained nicely wrapped up so nobody could get infected . I used my other hand and shoulder to spurt out the soft serve, so, luckily, that injury did not impede me from doing my normal job of making cones that look like crap. (Seriously, I doubt that made my cone forming any worse or better than usual. I was not the best DQ employee.)
Superman learned other ways to be weird after that.
One day he decided to have nipples. I’m not sure where that came from. The vet said he was a dude. But he sprouted all these nipples. I’m not one to judge. Maybe he was a trans cat or something? I still don’t think you can will yourself to have extra nipples, but he did.
His ultimate weirdness was that he fell in love with a stuffed animal. It was stuffed a tiger wearing a Hawaiin shirt. My Mom dubbed this tiger Blanche.
This is a Mother’s Day column because I had given her the stuffed tiger, attached to a pair of night socks for a Mother’s Day present one year.
My mom called this tiger Blanche (A Streetcar Named Desire) and Superman loved it so much, he dragged her all over the house. My Mom, when she couldn’t sew up poor Blanche anymore, resorted to buying baby clothes (onesies) that fit a stuffed tiger.
She wasn’t wrong. Superman loved this plush tiger so much, we had to have him cremated with it when he died!
Well, Superman, the cat, and I, and all the other cool cats you ever had, will always love you, Mom! No matter how weird we are!
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