In Memory of Skipper the Boat Cat
In Memory of Skipper the Boat Cat
July 2016 to Nov. 20, 2020
By Vicki Totten
Dec. 19, 2020
My sweet and beloved cat Skipper passed away on Nov. 20, 2020, departing from our lives as quickly as he had arrived. After plucking the starving six week old kitten out of a propane storage cage at a convenience store in Cuero Texas, we became instant parents of the black and white pitiful looking cat. And four years later, just as quickly, one day I’m taking him in for tests and by the end of the week I am watching him take his last breaths. And since the best way I know to honor the memory of Skipper and how much he was loved is through words, this is my attempt at doing so.
Anyone who had ever been to our house or our boat, knew who Skipper was. Many people also knew him from the “Skipper the Boat Cat” stories I used to write about him for a local on-line newsletter. When he was younger, he might be seen with his harness and leash out for walks with us near our boat in the harbor or down Water Street near our house. Or when he decided he was too old to be walked with a leash, you might have seen him trailing behind us, talking to us the entire way. He could also be identified by the strange grey box he wore on his collar that enabled us to locate him with our cell phones. And when we weren’t using GPS to track him down, you might have seen us running around trying to track down his collar that he had ditched, along with the tracker attached to it.
His antics kept us constantly on our toes. There was not a place that was too high for him to scale. Since we were on the way to our 33’ sailboat in the Rockport Harbor the day we rescued him, our boat was his first home. When we were on the boat, he would climb on top of the roof of the cockpit, onto the boom, and he even attempted to scale the mast the way he would a tree. Apparently in his mind nothing was too high for him to use his incredible climbing skills on. He regularly scaled houses to get on to the roof. He would perch on top of cabinets, light fixtures, in the rafters of our tall metal building, and more recently, walk along the tops of the railing on our deck that went 12 feet up in the air. Sometimes it seemed he relished performing such feats when I was around, just so he could watch me freak out.
And he was as smart as he was fearless. He refused to play the way most cats play. One year my son Ian gave Skipper a laser toy for Christmas. Unlike every other cat I have known, Skipper was not amused. He didn’t try and chase it around. He actually seemed to be insulted by our efforts, turning his nose up and turning away instead of responding to the laser.
Because of the stories I wrote about him, I would often meet people who knew of him because of those stories. I remember being surprised when I was introduced to the new Mayor and he responded that he knew who I was because he read my Skipper stories. And then there was the “winter Texan” I met who told me her office in Colorado used Skipper’s picture as their screen saver. After I posted about his death on my facebook page, I discovered from the more than 100 comments, just how many people felt they knew Skipper because of the Skipper stories. One year he even made it onto the calendar of the Aransas County Humane Society, perched on the boat with his cute little red harness on.
When we rescued him, he weighed barely two pounds, his black and white fur was sticking straight up and his extremely long whiskers made his head look oversized for his body. He turned into a beautiful cat with his long black fur and white feet and chest, often referred to as “Tuxedo” cats because of the coloration. I was told that because of his size, which included a huge fluffy tail, he was most likely part Main Coon Cat.
And as smart and brave as Skipper was, he was also incredibly insistent and persistent in making sure his needs were met. And one of his needs was to be able to roam outside. As much as we would have preferred that he be an indoor cat, he was not having it. From the time we first brought him on the boat with us, he let us know he was not an indoor cat. If we went to dinner, he would break through the screen of one of the ports (windows), so that when we came back he would be casually lying outside on the cockpit, reminding us that he was in charge. Or when we were still living in Austin, he became very skilled at picking the locks on cat doors we installed. After he managed to pull two of them off of their hinges, we began moving a piece of furniture in front of the door so he couldn’t get to it. It had to be a really heavy piece of furniture though, or he would move it.
Even keeping him inside at night created daily challenges for us. If we set the cat door so he couldn’t go back out, he would wake us up every few hours wanting to go out. We tried various things through the years to keep him in. For a period, we tried turning him into a studio cat by putting him in there. At other times, we used a tracker to keep track of him using GPS, but he would always end up ditching the expensive trackers, until we finally gave up using one.
But then over the last eight months or so, Skipper’s behaviors began to change. He came in less and less. He spent most of his time either hiding on top of my husband’s kiln or under neath it. He would snarl and hiss at me. He got to where he wouldn’t let me comb him. He certainly wouldn’t let me pick him up. I worried about him constantly. I thought maybe he had not adjusted to the new kitten we had brought into the house several months after his behaviors began to change – even though the behaviors had already started changing before Thelma was introduced to the household.
I attributed his behavioral changes to being stressed out by the stray cat that he was trying to keep off of our property. Several times I took Skipper to the vet, feeling foolish for asking them to check him out just to make sure there wasn’t something I was missing. He had stool tests and antibiotics for bites, but it wasn’t until the week Skipper died that our new vet suggested a full blood work up, which is when we discovered he had feline leukemia, a urinary tract infection, and in the end, lymphoma anemia with his lungs filling with fluid, and him fighting for each breath, barely able to lift his head.
We now think he had probably been sick for close to a year – from the first time he had been bitten by the feral cat that also had feline leukemia. In some ways maybe it is good we didn’t know he was sick until near the end of his life. If we had known, we would have tried to keep him inside and he would have been miserable. At least he was able to still have his freedom, which seemed so important to him. I’ll never be able to feel totally free of guilt about his death, since it was my job to keep him healthy and safe and I failed at both of those.
I feel his absence every day and question what more I should have done. If Skipper had never been allowed outside, he would probably still be alive today. If I had recognized sooner that the feral cat that bit him had also given him feline leukemia, we could possibly have lengthened Skipper’s life somehow. Or maybe if we had been more forceful with the person feeding the feral cat tormenting Skipper, he would have removed the offending cat from the area sooner – rather than after Skipper had died. At least that would have given Skipper some peace during the last few months of his life.
But none of my second guessing is going to bring him back or change what happened. He enriched our lives and touched so many people. I am grateful I have his stories as a reminder of the things he did that still bring a smile to my face. It helps knowing that he lived a life not many cats get to live. Instead of spending his days sleeping on a couch, he had experiences that enriched his and our lives immensely.
When I find myself wondering if we did right by him, I am reminded of a night a month or so before he died. He had stopped coming into the bedroom at night, unless it was to guard the house by parking himself in the windowsill looking out at the side deck for the feral cat. But on this particular night he began weaving back and forth between my husband and me, purring very loudly and rubbing against us. He did this until his purring reached a loud pitch and he was keening. I knew that night that he was expressing his love for us. As much as his behaviors had changed in the preceding months, on that night, he was letting us know the love we felt for him was also returned.
As my pet sitter Erin told me “He was a good and beautiful kitty. He will be lovely with his wings.” Rest in peace dear Skipper.