Chairman Meow The Magickal Wish Cat

Little girls are powerful and persuasive creatures. If magic exists on earth, it is in them.

We used to call my daughter Punk Girl because she's a rough-and-tumble, tree-climbing run-through-the-redwoods kinda girl. Like most little girls, Punk Girl loved little cute cuddly animals... especially kitties. I remember her making a wish one night. Her fingers were crossed, eyes tight as she vocalized through her clenched teeth, "Oh, how I wish I had a kitty!" The words had a vibratory energy that went out into the universe. How cute, I thought, touched by the conviction in her voice.

At that time, our home was surrounded by huge towering redwoods. Loggers had taken the largest trees a century earlier, but these trees have had many years to grow, and are now well over one hundred feet tall. Being close to the ocean ensures a lot of moisture in the air, and the Redwood bark becomes quite saturated from either rain, drizzle, or good old condensation. When the morning sun strikes the trees, the wet water in the bark heats up and begins to evaporate into clouds of vapour. When this occurs, it looks as though the trees are about to burst into flames. It is quite beautiful to enjoy with a hot cup of my homemade chai in hand (I make the best chai in the whole wide world, and someday I'll reveal my secret recipe). The morning following my daughter's wish was such a morning. I was outside with my neighbor Melissa 'watching the trees explode', and could hear a loud meowing, or maybe a baby, (and I was really hoping that the stork hadn't dropped off another one). I asked Melissa, if it was one of her cats. As we looked around, we could see both Sphere and Cipher, and neither one of them was meowing so it obviously wasn't one of them. The sound was coming from the cottage down the driveway where Jammer's lived, (and continue to live to this day*).

As we walked down the driveway, we could see that the first rays of the sun were hitting the wet wooden roof tiles of Jammer's cottage, huge outgassing clouds of vapour ploomed from the rooftop, illuminated by the early sun's low angle rays directly behind it. In the midst of the mist was a large cat pacing back and forth along the ridge of the roof line. With loud cries of "meowah" it was now certain that the mysterious meower had been identified. It looked pretty cool too, in a kind of glorious way. The cat was mostly black with touches of white. At first we thought it was Jammer's cat Helix because it appeared to be about the same size, and colour.

I picked up a nearby crate that Jammers use to put empty beer bottles in, placed it upside down on the ground under the eves of the roof where I could reach high enough to grab the cat and help "it" down. I stood on the crate calling to the cat who responded and quickly scurried down the sloped roof toward me. Pulling the cat from the roof revealed not just a cat, but a very large cat. Possibly the largest cat I had ever seen. I placed the cat on the ground, and he continued to meow. Alpha, Jammer's faithful dog, (rest her doggy soul), seemed concerned, and only sniffed the mysterious cat. Normally Alpha would have reveled in territorialistic rites, but she exhibited none of that, and seemed genuinely concerned about this very vocal feline who followed me up the drive to my house where I gave him some tuna from a can.

My daughter was so excited that her wish had come true, it was going to be hard to let her know that this kitty belonged to someone else, and was probably lost, and that we'd need to find the owners. As it turned out, we could never locate the cat's rightful owner, and the cat has remained with our family to this day (with a couple of exceptions when he ran off because we got two new kittens, and another time he got lost after we moved to another location).

Now that he was our cat, he needed to have a name. Our daughter said he seemed to hop around a lot, (fleas - it turned out), and clearly said "meowah" so he was given the tentative name of Meow Hop, the name used the first time we took him to the vet who told us that he looked like he was probably eight to ten years old, and was male, (not female as we had all assumed). His name soon changed to Chairman Meow, because of his stately manner. He has been with us for many years, and is now approximately twenty years old. He's still the King of Cats.

*Skippy Jammer is one of the greatest freestyle frisbee and disc golf players in the whole wide world. He has been world freestyle champion more than 10 times, and held the De Laveaga Disc Golf Course record for many years.