After I finished planting sunflowers in our backyard last weekend, I put up protective fencing around the new garden bed. I left a passageway at the back of the bed, though, to give our cat, Marlon, room to reach his favorite napping spot behind the rose bushes. All morning I’d felt pinpricks of worry, because Marlon hadn’t come home after his usual late-night prowling.
The big yellow tomcat with a crooked tail became a member of our family two years ago, after a life of roaming the streets. Marlon was homeless, semi-feral and not neutered. He’d made a pest of himself in our neighborhood, sneaking into basements and garages, scrounging for food, and spraying to mark his territory. His ears were ragged, with chewed-off notches, and he was so thin that his ribs protruded. Yet he and Benjamin BadKitten, the Maine coon cat I loved so much, developed an odd-couple type of friendship. Marlon had a tough-guy swagger, but he displayed a surprising gentleness with Benjamin.
Lee named the cat Marlon, a reflection of Brando’s role as the cocky leader of a motorcycle gang in “The Wild One.” After Marlon’s neutering surgery and a few weeks of regular meals and daylong naps, he more closely resembled the corpulent Brando in the later years of his career. Our Marlon actually waddled. He quickly developed a deep bond with Lee. From his carpeted penthouse perch in Lee’s office, Marlon greeted Lee at eye level every morning, wriggling, purring and “just being happy” while Lee petted him — all before Lee could drink his first cup of coffee. The cat who had once cowered from men now claimed his place on Lee’s lap in the evening and often commandeered Lee’s roomy patio chair in the afternoon, leaving Lee to sit on the grass with Duffy, our Bernedoodle puppy.
The day after Lee and I brought Duffy home to join our family, Marlon firmly established the hierarchy in their two-critter pack: the cat was top dog. Duffy twisted into tailspins of joy during futile games of catch-the-cat, even when Marlon reversed the rules and chased the baby dog around our backyard. Marlon would have hissed at the word, “nanny,” but he was often the only one who could ride herd on Duffy.
In many midnight hours, I stood on the patio, wearing my bathrobe and waiting for the puppy to finish his final bathroom break. I silently vibrated with frustration while Duffy loitered in the grass, pouncing on bugs — until he spotted a pale gold creature, floating toward us in the moonlight. Marlon would pad across the lawn, ignoring Duffy, and join me on the patio. Then, with a crisp nod that said, “I got this,” the big cat would lead the puppy straight into the house and back to his bed. “Thanks, pal,” I’d whisper. “I owe you.”
Marlon had an innate sweetness of spirit that even years of rough living couldn’t completely destroy, and Lee and I domesticated him as much as his feral nature would allow. But when we tried to keep Marlon in the house overnight, he used his considerable strength to knock over the chair we’d wedged under the door knob, and then he clawed the latch off the cat door. Finally, we had to accept that our street cat could never be fully tamed.
On the afternoon that I set up the sunflowers’ fence, a neighbor from a few blocks away walked slowly to our backyard gate. She hesitated, and I took an unsteady breath. My eyes filled even before she spoke. Her husband had found Marlon’s body in their backyard that morning and had laid him to rest soon afterward. He hoped he had done the right thing by burying Marlon so quickly, she said. I couldn’t bear to ask for details; imagining them was painful enough. I thanked our neighbor for their kindness and compassion, and then ran, sobbing, to find Lee.
Marlon died as he’d lived, a tough cat who’d run wild on the streets all his life. Lee and I had often wondered where he went, what he did in the darkness. Now, with his passing, he will always be a mystery: a brawler, eager for affection; a loner, grateful for family. He knew we loved him, and we tried to keep him safe. In the end, though, he wouldn’t let us fence him in.
Craft Rozen remembers feeding the starving yellow cat, who paused to lick her hand before finishing his meal. Email her at scraftroze@aol.com
