We weren’t intending to get a third cat. Or at least, I wasn’t.
In the days after we were married but before we had kids, we had two feline companions named Eve and Nermal. Eve was our St. Louis girl, adopted shortly after we’d moved into an apartment that allowed pets. We adopted Nermal during our first year back in Ohio. And at that time, I was under the mistaken impression that everyone in the house was content with two.
But then we visited a local shelter, with the understanding that my wife was having a down day and wanted to just look, pet, play, and feel better via these interactions. I have a vague memory of walking through the dog kennels first, and then stepping into the room where all the cats were kept.
That’s when we saw a gray and black striped tabby pressing up against the bars of his enclosure, freely talking to us, demanding attention. We asked for him to be let out, and we sat on the floor for a while as he walked around, rubbing against us, a steady string of meows filling the room. His charm worked: after a brief time of pleading from my wife, we were on our way home with our third cat.
I was the one who named him Snickers. His coloring reminded me of the inside of one of my favorite candy snacks. It ended up fitting perfectly, as he turned out to be the biggest sweetheart of our fur family. He had no qualms about investigating and meeting new friends. He always had a strong curiosity, a felt need to sniff out and rub his face across both human and animal alike.
It was less that he was fearless, and more that he just didn’t care. If you were new, he didn’t hiss at you like Eve might, or run away like Nermal. Instead, he’d give you a chance until you gave him reason to do otherwise.
This laid-back attitude got him into trouble more than once, because it extended to a certain lack of spatial or situational awareness. One of the best examples that has become family lore concerns Snickers the weekend of our daughter’s baptism.
We’d ordered a sheet cake for the occasion, and he’d jumped onto the table where we’d placed it. Apparently wanting to get as close a look as possible (and likely a taste as well), he attempted to walk across it, leaving several perfect paw prints in the icing and making his mark on the celebration. We still talk about this incident with humor and affection.
Snickers concluded a long downhill health journey this week. When it became clear that his body was getting too tired to fight any longer, the four of us all took turns keeping vigil with him, making it a point to thank him for so many years of companionship, and returning to him the carefree love that he’d shared with us for that long.
We weren’t intending to get a third cat. Or at least, I wasn’t. But I’ll forever be grateful that we did.
Jeffrey A. Nelson 