travels with mata hairi original.docx

8/10/2019 Travels with Mata Hairi original.docx

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travels with Mata Hairi: The Cat Who Saved Me

by Britt Collins

A missing cat. Two desperate, broken men. A whirlwind road trip across the West Coast. The

disappearance of Mata Hairi, a cat with two names and a secret past, turned into a real-life mystery that

made international headlines. She travelled 3,600 miles chasing adventure: living among surfers in a

Californian beach town, dining with cowboys in Idaho, surviving a cattle stampede in Montana and

encounters with bears at Yosemite National Park. Her 10-and-half-month odyssey began in Portland,

Oregon on September 10th2012.

It was about midnight, raining and thundering, and the streets were deserted. Michael King and Josh

Stinson were rushing back to their shelter, their clothes dripping wet, shoes water-logged. They saw a

scraggly-looking cat, scared and soaked to the bone, crouching under a restaurant table. She was skinny,

she was dirty and she was hurt and she looked up at me and asked for help, recounts Michael, a rangy and

softly spoken 48-year-old drifter with long silver-streaked hair and beard and a deeply lined face, scoured

by the seasons. Living on the street, the last thing in the world I wanted was a cat. There was a bunch of

traffic on Hawthorne street and I was afraid shed get run over. I couldnt leave her.

It came from deep in here, explains his friend Josh Stinson, touching his heart. A wiry 26-year-old with

glasses and dreadlocks, who simultaneously looks well-educated and homeless, he was an ex-navy man

from a small town in the Midwest and cared about things, especially vulnerable animals. She didnt

struggle or complain when I handed her over to Michael, but just stared at me gratefully. She knew right off

shed been saved.

When they brought the cat back to their squat at the back of a UPS parking lot, Michael noticed that one of

her eyes was puffy and swollen. He went back into the rain to buy some cat food, leaving her with Stinson.

When she saw the can of Meow Mix, he says she opened her mouth and let out a faint, hungry squeak and

just wolfed it down. Then she scampered over, purring, and let us stroke her bony back. From the first

night, she took to us like peas and carrots.


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Falling on hard times, Michael had been homeless for many years and sometimes found himself helping

strays that crossed his path, but he sensed this one was special. The grey-and-white tabby was a beauty,

perhaps no more than three or four years old, with tiger-striped patches and soulful green eyes. She didnt

have a collar, so they assumed she mustve been a stray and named her Tabor, after the Tabor Hill Caf

where she had been found her.

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On a breezy late-summer afternoon, Ron Buss was rushing home in quiet anticipation. It was Labor Day

and Portland was like a ghost town. The only sounds were the crows cawing, the scuffle of falling pine

cones. Most weekends, his rambling white-and-gold bungalow on the corner of SE 37thAvenue was full-

to-bursting with his musician and artist friends. He had plans to go away to the seaside with his cats.

When he approached the house and saw the empty picnic table on his front lawn, where Mata Hairi

usually waited for him, he knew something was wrong. She spent her days roaming a three-block patch in

the peaceful neighborhood of neatly pruned roses and shady trees. Thinking she mightve been chased

away by a dog and hiding somewhere, he searched all the nearby backyards, sheds, under porches, put up

flyers, combed the area in vain.

Losing her like that was devastating, says Ron, a short, stocky man in his fifties, with salt -and-pepper

hair, in a black Ministry rock T-shirt and Converse low-tops. There were days when I felt if I didnt get

her back it would destroy me. Id sit with her gone and think back to the time when I was raising them

as kittens.

Mata was part of a litter of five kittens that had been abandoned under a neighbors porch . Ron fed the

sick, scrawny two-week-old orphans with an eyedropper and gave them the life that could have been just

as easily denied. He kept two and named them after characters in an American cartoon show from the

70s Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp.


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An Oregon native, Ron grew up in a middle-class suburb of Portland and, after university in Eugene,

moved back. Lured by the cheap rents and green spaces, the once-rundown southeast area was buzzing

with Art Deco shopfronts, retro bars and artisan coffeehouses that reflected the citys youthful, eclectic

spirit. One of the reasons he bought the house was to give his cats a safe place to roam. Over the years,

he had dozens of rescues and had unconventional ideas about raising the kittens. He took them

everywhere: friends houses, excursions to the beach, visits to their other three littermates. I wanted

them to have rich experiences and bring them up almost like children. I took them to work every day and

the customers adored them, says Ron, who used to own a sto rage company, a family-run business that

he sold to his brother-in-law, before opening a guitar and collectibles store. They loved to travel and

anywhere I went they were happy to go with me.

Sitting on his porch in the July sunshine, he thinks back to the weeks of frantic searching and people

claiming to have seen her. Someone called to say he thought he mightve seen Mata scavenging from a

garbage can, said that shed looked really thin, you could see her ribs. Those pathetic words struck Rons

heart. I couldnt live not knowing, he says, and missed the quiet intimacies of their daily routine, her sat

on the kitchen counter watching him scramble eggs and waiting for him when he came home in the

evenings. Mata was like a child to me and I mourned her daily. Theres a spiritual connection between us.

If it stems from anything, its probably getting them as tiny orphans. Theyre so important to me, every

decision I make I consider my cats. My dad doesnt understand it. He says thats just pathetic. You can go

anywhere, do anything, but you just want to be around your cats. Nothing made me happier.

Her loss consumed him. At home alone whenever his lodger was out, especially at night, despair slipped

over him like a shroud. The pain just wouldnt go away.I guess I am very lonely and invested

everything into my cats. I was crumbling and Creto was the only thing holding me together.

Even her littermate had become dispirited and sat on the porch every night waiting for her to come

home. He was half the cat he was and wouldnt even roam the neighborhood like he used to. Creto

never stopped looking for her.


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This wasnt the first time Mata strayed. Once she ended up into the trunk of a neighbors car and went all

the way up to Vancouver. Deep in the woods, he opened the boot to unload his camping gear and the cat

sprang out and shot into the pines. He told me three days after she went missing. I think he lied because

he disliked animals and all the neighborhood cats were afraid of him, says Ron of this neighbor, who was

already known around area for his violent past and has since moved away. Mata would hiss whenever

she saw him. I left my cats locked inside that morning. When I got home at 8.30pm, the back door was

ajar. Things were askew in the living room and bedroom and someone left their bottled water on my

bedroom nightstand. I found Creto freaked out and hiding under a dresser, trying to tell me something.

This person was evil enough to have pulled such a stunt. The story sounded fishy, why would Mata

jump into the trunk of a car of someone who terrified her? When I confronted him about these points,

he threatened me with violence. Im sure it was done maliciously.

During those six months, she lived wild until someone, mercifully, found her and handed her over to a

humane shelter, which scanned her chip and called Ron Buss. She likes to ramble, he muses. Shes very

inquisitive and too smart for her britches.

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A few blocks away, Mata, now called Tabor, had quickly settled into her new digs in the UPS parking lot

on the edgy enclave of Hawthorne Boulevard. She was looking healthier, too, less rangy and her puffy eye

was healing. She played for hours, stalking insects and tossing and losing her new catnip mice and balls.

Sipping black coffee out of a dented tin cup, Michael recounts how she liked to play hide-and-seek with

them, vanishing behind a bush with her tail poking out, thinking she was well hidden. Wed hear her

rustling in the bushes, yowling, looking for one of her toys. Shed make her own, too, out of fallen

leaves, feathers,cigarette packs. She was so playful. If my face was close to her, shed reach out with

her paw and stroke my cheek.

Giving the cat breakfast and leaving her in the squat during the day while they worked the streets

panhandling became routine. Every time we went back to the UPS lot to bed down for the night and called

out her new name, shed shoot out of a bush, says Michael. Shed purr at the sight of us. I figured it was


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just the food that had made her come back. It was comforting to be ab le to help someone in the same

position as myself.

He went from feeding a hungry stray to his spending days feeling worried, hoping to God that Tabor

would be at the squat when we got back. Soon she started looking at Michael differently, with eyes full of

love. After a week, they stopped leaving her behind. Id toss her on the top of my pack and hauled her

around all day. From that moment, he explains, she became a parrot cat. Every time we packed ready to

go, shed jump on my shoulder. It took some practice to carry a 10-pound cat and all her food and

dishes.Sometimes I felt like a ship in the ocean walking around with a full-grown cat swaying on my

backpack.When we went down the street, shed jump back and forth from my backpack to

Stinsons.

Michael and Tabor became a big hit on the streets of southeast Portland, where the cat, sometimes perched

on his shoulder or curled on his rucksack with Buddha-like calmness. And it seemed there was no end to

the number of people who gravitated towards them. The cat became a celebrity,says Kyle, an intense

19-year-old with long shaggy hair, who sometimes traveled with them . Everyone loved her and would

stop and take pictures and give us money. We never asked for it.

During most of his years on the street, Michael lived close to the bone, subsisting on the kindness of

others. The cat had suddenly lifted his spirits and his panhandling earnings. The cat was a rainbow in a

dark world, he says of the little tabby who provided him with companionship and unconditional love

that he didnt know he needed. I was 47 years old and my life spread out before me like an opened

grave. Id lost hope in myself, lost faith that anything good would ever happen. I kinda started slipping into

a deep depression. But with Tabor on my back, people stopped me and wanted to talk and help us. After a

while we were calling Hawthorne the Green Mile for the money me and the cat would make just walking

down the street.

All the same, he had the wild hope they would get the cat back where she belonged. Watching her

sleeping, Michael started wondering about the kind of l ife she lived before. How long shed been

solitary when he found her? If she had been dumped and became a street cat? They scanned all the

missing pet posters around the area for weeks. Stinson came up with the idea of putting a picture of Tabor


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on Craigslist, the go-to place for lost and found pets. After three months of caring for her and posting notes

online, when no one came forward to reclaim her, Stinson turned to Michael and said, Shes yours,

Groundscore. It was the name by which his close friends knew him because he was constantly finding

money or other lost items on the ground and would say scored.

Sprawled out across the sidewalk with all his worldly possessions, Michael was in his element beside

his ragtag band of buddies, outside a Chinese take-away, on a block glowing with red and yellow

neon lights.Theres so much love on the streets, he says, firing up a roll-up, his hands scarred and

calloused, his fingernails encrusted with dirt. We all looked after one another. Like when the Titanic

sank, those survivors had camaraderie. Mostly in their twenties, this tight-knit group were bound

together by their sad circumstances and restlessness. They saw themselves as kind of refugees from

society, tumbling from doorstep to doorstep and trawling around their few belongings and childhood

scars.Having grown up with a father who terrified him and spent much of his adolescence on the run,

Michael had an instinctive empathy for troubled young people.

Kyle, a skinny street kid in denim overalls and a ragged sweater, who lived on and off the streets of

Portland since he was 14, describes his relationship with him as best friend and mentor, and says

Michaels a really good guy and the first adult who made sense to me. The tenth child born to a mother in

prison, Kyle was adopted by a Harvard-educated lawyer and his social-worker wife, but never fit in

anywhere and thinks of himself as a nobody from nowhere. Theres nothing romantic about waking up

in cold doorways and feeling useless, he adds, but his happiest times were all the late nights of drinking

cheap beer while bantering about art, politics and world news with Michael and Stinson. Wed sit around

smoking and swapping stories about our adventures. We all felt a part of something. And Tabor was

one of the gang too.

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In early December, when winter blew in and the landscape turned gray and ghostly, Michael decided to

leave Portland after his birthday.. He was hoping to have a grand party, but they ended up celebrating

among the mossy graves of the dead under a wintry, moonless sky. We got kicked out of four different


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drinking spots and went to the cemetery because the cops didnt mess with us there. I was turning 48 and

wanted to make a big deal out of it mainly because Im twice the age of everybody I hang out with.

That night, he announced his intention of taking the cat on a road trip to the rest of his homeless pals.

Everyone, aside from Kyle and Stinson, looked at me as though Id lost my mind. Someone said: And

how are you planning to travel around with a catfirst-class or coach?

Initially Michael had thought this was crazy, but felt he had no other choice. He also wanted to show his

feline companion the sightsit was one of those compulsions of the heart. I later discovered Tabor, unlike

most cats, loved car rides.

Michael had spent ten years wandering America, drifting like tumbleweed and finding himself among

strangers to help him forget all the sad things that happened to him. When I walked out the door and left

everything behind, I didnt realise I was walking into homelessness,he says quietly. I thought I was

just getting away for a while.

At the time, he was living back in St Louis and making a good living as a chef working 60-hour weeks

while looking after his dying friend. I didnt like the way the hospital was taking care of him and he didnt

want to be there. So I brought him home, pretty much kidnapped him. He was a high school buddy and my

closest friend. Wed been living together for 13 years, doing our thing, sharing the rent. When his friend

died on October 20th 2003, something shifted inside of him. I looked around and thought: Whats all

this? We had a house full of stuff, a driveway full of stuff, a car, a boat and a trailer. I didnt want

anything. I wanted to be light on my feet. So I packed two backpacks, walked out the door, and put my

thumb out at the nearest highway.

He was escaping from grief, boredom and familiarity into the enchantment of the unknown. For a few

years, Michael drifted from city to city, flitting through peoples lives and taking up with other

transients he met on the road. Slowly he began to feel rootless and that he belonged nowhere.Before

his money ran out, he went to Los Angeles, figuring its a big place and there would be plenty of jobs. I


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worked in a car wash, did some gardening, moving furniture. Working with illegals, border jumpers,

political asylum seekers was humbling. I was prepared to do anything, but sell medical marijuana on the

Venice boardwalk.

There were long stretches where he couldnt earn a dime. After months of washing in the publictoilets and

walking around in the baking heat looking for work, Michael felt a complete failure. Alexei, a Russian

guy I met during my stint at the car wash, said no one would hire me because Im too negative and it

shows. This coming from a hustler who lived with his parents. He worked at a supermarket and, promising

me a job, introduced me to the deli counter, the bakery. Well, I felt like a dictator visiting a factory while

Alexei paraded me around and I walked cautiously, like Ceausescu, along the aisles observing with a how

interesting expression and shaking hands with all the cashiers. Greetings! Glorious workers of Ralphs.

Eventually Michael got a job in an Italian restaurant as a cook. The wages were low, the hours were long,

but he felt grateful. He began the job diligently, but after a few weeks started eating and drinking

everything in sight. I started very malnourished but gradually Id spend considerable time in the cellar

eating handfuls of raspberries and imported Parmesan. Then I found the burrata and the trays of tiramisu.

By the second month I started exploring the bar. In the morning Id get myself a white Russian and started

getting the orders wrong. At Christmas I got to work drunk. By New Years, the chef caught me eating all

the croissants and fired me on the spot.

It was the day he found Sunshine, a ginger-and-white kitten, under a restaurant dumpster in an

alleyway. The littlest kitten he had ever seen, Sunshine was thin as a sliver and trying to make a meal

out of a grease-soaked paper towel. Filthy and flea-bitten, she looked hopeless, which was exactly

how he felt at that moment. Having just lost my job, the last thing I needed was a kitten. She was an

alley dweller like myself. She wouldnt have survived another week. But this kitten didnt think she

needed saving and put up a fight, hissing and barring her teeth. All it took is a bit of food and a few

reassuring words. When I scooped her up, she burrowed into the crook of my arm and looked into

my eyes, mewing weakly.

He spent his last few dollars on Sunshine. The next day, he saw a Help Wanted sign at a diner and

spent the night debating if showing up at 6am wouldve been read as a sign of being eager to work


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or damn crazy. After another humiliating interview, I was exhausted and its only morning. My

stomach was empty and the smell of vagrants urine on Venice Beach made me feel nauseous. It all

smelled of defeat.

Michael had lightning strikes of bad luck and found himself broke, frightened, helpless and alone.

Im an escapist,he says unrepentantly, admitting that he never really took to the regular world, whose

demands for structure and socialising could trigger crushing bouts of depression. Most moments of my life

has just been getting through it.Impretty horrible at relationships. Leaving, moving on and being alone

is what I know.

Since he was a child, he had learned to seek solace among animals in times of trouble. He had hit a

real low and Sunshine, as Tabor would later, kept him going. Trying to make a buck that was hard

coming, I worried about how I would support a growing kitten. LA was soul destroying, so we moved

on to Ventura. I cant say that I was lost, but I was definitely drifting again.

The kitten was a handful and hated being walked on a leash. Michael felt guilty and, about five

months later, ended up giving Sunshine away to a family that kept offering her a good home. It was

heartbreaking, but I thought she deserved a better life than I could give her.

And then along came Tabor. She made him laugh, adding meaning and a sense of magic to his life. One

night, he remembers, finding a bunch of fish in the sleeping bag. Shed dug out a can of sardines from the

trash and tucked them into bed, all neatly lined up like she did with her catnip mice. I really needed her and

Tabor knew that. The only thing that sustained me before the cat were the friends I made on the street.

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On December 5th, Michael set off with the cat and his few possessions in a beat-up rucksack, to the

subtropical sunshine of California. The snow had broken heavy, swallowing up all of the citys streets. As


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soon as they left town, they rolled into a blizzard. Iwas freezing in my worn clothes, my fingers were

frostbitten, he says, but luckily I had a cat carrier for Tabor, a nice one with fleece and 10,000 blankets.

There was a time when Id travel all over America. These days, Im just trying to survive another winter.

On Christmas Eve, Michael and Tabor stayed in Eugene, Oregon waiting out the snowstorm. They spent

three days in a motel room with the snow filling the street outside and the red neon sign casting a warm

glow across the windows. I just watched TV, with Tabor snuggled on the pillow beside me, recovering

from the exhaustion of roughing it. On the second night, we watched the movie Babe together. The cat, he

recalls, slouching on her back like a person, was mesmerized with all the barnyard animals that could talk.

She would leap towards the TV and looked behind the screen to investigate how to get them out. When the

credits rolled, she made a nest under the cover and nodded off.

By foot, bus and car, they continued on their one-man, one-cat expedition across endless ribbons of lonely

highways. They made it down to King City, California, a sleepy coastal town with roadsides of roses and

fields of lettuce growing everywhere. The dazzle of the ocean. The scent of strawberries. The warmth

of the sun felt like Eden for the drifter and the cat with a vagabond heart. It was New Years Eve

and very uneventful. We didnt celebrate. I dont need an excuse. I drink every day.They poked

around the towns stores, stopped and bought bagels and tuna for Tabor at a deli, posed for pictures. When

people saw us, they were still crazy about the cat on my back, he says, and encouraging that kind of

craziness earned him a buck or two. He enjoyed spinning his tale of how he found Tabor that rainy

September night. One day he was caught off-guard when somebody asked him how he became homeless

and where his family was?

Since leaving home, Michael was keen to forget about his sad and shameful past. Escape became a way of

life for him. He was 13 years old the first time he ran away from home. Even as a small kid, I knew I had

to get the hell out of that house. He snuck out in the middle of the night along with his twin brother John

Patrick. From St Louis they got as far as New Mexico before being hauled back home in handcuffs .

Michael William Arthur King III grew up in an ordinary two-storey clapboard house with picture windows

and a leafy backyard in St Louis, Missouri. Just the across the Mississippi River from Chicago, it was a city

of turn-of-the-century Victorian houses, beer breweries and the blues.


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The son of a police officer who came from generations of do-gooder firemen and policemen and an

English mother who worked at his primary school as a cook, Michael was raised with a mixture of neglect

and cruelty. His parents, whom he describes as bad-tempered strangers, took out all their frustrations and

unhappiness on him and his four siblings. My father was angry and overworked, my mother was a mess

and us kids lived in fear, he says, recalling his long-past miseries, his blue-grey eyes, haunted and

glistening with tears whenever he dipped into the murky and unsettling hinterland of his childhood. I was

mentally abused, spiritually abused, physically abused. I was being hammered all the time.

Sometimes shut away in the closet or attic, he was underfed, undereducated, scarcely noticed except as

an object of scorn and fury. The worst part, he says, was being locked in an upstairs closet while the rest

of the family was eating dinner. I didnt do anything wrong. I wasnt bad enough not to eat. Whenever I

heard that tink tink on a plate, it takes me back and I cant eat.

He struggled at school and instead focused on survival skills, never grumbling or complaining and trying to

make himself as invisible as possible. He disappeared, whenever he could, into books, dreaming of

faraway places and planning his escape. He kept running away until he eventually wound up in Montana.

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For days, Michael hitchhiked with the cat on his backpack until he reached the Pacific Ocean. They settled

in Ventura, a peaceful community of wooden houses hugging a sparkling inlet dotted with surfers. He

pitched up under an old acacia tree in a secluded cove on a shining scimitar of Californian beach. It was

just as I had left it last year, which meant that nobody had discovered it. I had to make sure to find a place

to hide our campfire. The main thing about having a squat like this is that you dont want people seeing you

coming and going. Regular folks will call the cops, even though youre not doingany harm and the home-

bums will rob you blind.


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He set about making it habitable again, sweeping out all the driftwood and seaweed. Then I showed Tabor

the ocean. Weirdly, she had no fear of the water. It was a funny thing to see a cat, covered in sand, hunting

seagulls. On that first day she came away so dirty with sand and seawater that I had to take her to a pet

cleaning place and she had a shampoo.

The cat adapted instantly and behaved like she owned the place. She would sit for hours with her front

paws elegantly crossed, gazing towards the sea like a lioness surveying her wild and infinite kingdom.

Most mornings, she made her rounds visiting the surfers, their neighbors across the sand, slipping into their

vans and making herself at home. The first time I saw Tabor wander into one of their vans, I rushed over

scared theyd drive off with her. Johnny, one of the young surfers, came out from a marijuana fog. I tell

him my cat went in there and he looks at me like an Amish farmer would look at a Louis Vuitton summer

collection catalogue. I see Tabor, behind him, stretched out across a cushion looking disturbingly mellow.

When shes nowhere in sight, Michael would call her and shed leap out ofher hiding place, from the

surfers van or a tree and pounce on him like a leopard. Sometimes shed wander off on some secret

mission. I try to follow her without being intrusive. Still, she senses me looking at herbecause the

friendship and feeling between us ran as deep as the Mississippi River. Shed turn around and mewwith a trilling bird-like call that kittens make greeting their mothers.

She had a real conscience about things, too, although that didnt stop her doing things she shouldnt.

One morning Michael woke up and Tabor was gone. He walked up and down the shoreline, calling her,

with all the terrifying possibilities swirling through his mind: Could she have been swept away by a tide

and drowned? Snatched by a mountain lion? Tortured by some sadistic human? He had flashbacks of his

dog Wylie Coyote who was stolen and found himself crying.

Just as he was thinking he mightve lost Tabor too, he heard a faint, faraway mrrrreeoow. He spotted her

further down the beach, sitting on top of an enormous seagull. The seagull was mighty pissed off,


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squawking and trying to fly off with a full-grown cat on his back. But Tabor refused to go quietly,

grabbing the birds neck as though she was about to ride off on a horse. Her eyes blazed with resentment,

Michael remembers, and she hissed at me for the first time.

When they got back to their home beneath the tree, she turned her back to Michael and sulked. By

lunchtime when he served her favorite dish of chicken, she quietly forgot about it. Once a week, this little

old lady, coincidentally, called Mrs Tabor would turn up on the beach with home-cooked food for us.

All sorts of things like casseroles and enchiladas and she brought roast chicken and meatloaf for

Tabor. I had a skillet and a miniature stove, so I could heat up these wonderful meals.

There were a lot of friendly, fascinating folks in Ventura, but the surfers were the best show in town.

Johnny, a good-looking, goateed half-Scottish, half-Navaho-Indian from New Mexico whose tribal name is

Running with Deer, came to Hollywood to be an actor and, in between auditions, worked as a fitness

instructor. I once caught him trying to teach Tabor how to do fire and rain dances, says Michael. She

thought it was another game.

All tanned and fit Californian dudes with names like Sky and Stone, they were regularly having beach

parties. One afternoon, Johnny showed up by their tree dwelling. Hey, dude, maybe you should trysurfing, itll broaden your life, he said to Michael, giving him apitying what for expression when he saw

him reading a book. I learned that anything was possible after I taught a bunch of Scottish people to surf.

Tabor seem to get a kick out of these gatherings. Johnny would lead everyone in a circle around the

surfboard dancing to Brazilian conga beats and shed weave around, tail swaying. She took an interest in

their campfire chats, her eyes brightening whenever her name was mentioned. Michael enjoyed their frat-

boy conversations, too, and the drama of it all.

They started the evening talking about America being a breeding ground for serial killers. Earlier that

week, a scorned ex-cop went on a mass-shooting spree in Big Bear and was still at large in the nearby San

Bernadino Mountains. Johnny speculated that most cops had psychotic tendencies and it was probably a


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middle-aged crisis. Sky rightly observed, If you smoke pot, all you want to do is eat Doritos, watch TV

and not attempt to kill people in nice neighborhoods.

From there, they moved on to women. Johnny boasted about his conquests, who apparently looked like Eva

Mendes and Salma Hayek and wanted to spend some quality time with him. Youre dreaming, dude,

Stone told him, laughing. They were more like Consuela and Ramona who just finished their shift at

Macdonalds.No offense, but imagine Evas sweaty panties. Now add eight sizes and deep-fry them adding

tartar sauce. Not the same, is it?

Strangely, Michael thought, the surfers never asked him why he and the cat were there; they were simply

part of the landscape, like the waves and the wildlife. Those moments beneath the acacia with the cat were

sheer magic. He realized that he hadnt felt that serene in over a decade.

Living wild with a housecat had its blessings, but it had its curses too. The most pressing danger we

faced, says Michael, was not from the cops, the crack-heads or the envious home-bums who could not

understand what was so special about this old drifter and his cat, but the local coyotes. I could hear them at

night and I knew sooner or later they would try to snatch Tabor. I spent many sleepless nights, as we lay

bundled together in our sleeping bag, listening out for every sound.

The coyotes were the least of their troubles: there were mountain lions and bobcats strolling the beach,

hawks and owls sweeping in and out of the trees. He wanted to let Tabor be a cat and give her the freedom

to explore, but at the same time making her environment as secure as Alcatraz, or as much it was possible

in the wilderness. He started drinking more to calm his fears, constantly watching the skies and trying to

teach her that there were real dangers. I got to the point where Id say: Look up Tabor, look up about a

hundred times a day, pointing upwards and shed turn her sweet little cat face to the skies. In a sense, its

like having a child. You feed them, protect them from bad things, love them, do your best to educate them

and hope theyll be healthy and happy.

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Those months in Ventura disappeared in an idyllic haze of generosity, good fortune and time spent with a

great friend. By now the cat was growing to be an adventurous world-class explorer. Michael felt as if he

and Tabor had been together forever, sharing a private language of looks, gestures and expressions. She

understood more of my words and it seemed we could communicate without having to say a whole lot. She

would sit and listen to my conversations with friends or strangers with these owl-like eyes, full of wisdom

and depth, trying to process stuff. Im sure she was aware of what was happening.

In mid-April, Josh Stinson and his new girlfriend Madison drove to California from the Deep South, along

with their dog Bobby. Stinson, like Michael, was restless, a slacker with rebel fantasies, whose time in a

navy had made him to realise he valued his freedom outside the rigours and rules of society; even if it

meant scraping by and being a scrounger.

With each new adventure, Michael and his wandering flock would split for months at a time and then

remerge in some wild part of California or in the gritty backstreets of Portland. They chilled out, talking

about their winters and their discoveries, before hitting the road again. Their first stop was Yosemite

National Park. Remembering our run-in with the coyotes in Ventura, we camped close to the road every

night and tried not to have much food out, says Michael. But even the smell of the cat was like

saying: Come eat us.

One afternoon, while Madison took Bobby for a walk, Michael and Stinson had a picnic on a rock. He

decided to feed Tabor, too. All of a sudden, the cat was spooked, puffing up and hissing. Looking over his

shoulder, he glimpsed a 350-pound bear, just 50 feet away. This big old brown bear is having a stand-off

with Tabor. Im trying to whisper to Stinson about the bear behind him and hes laughing and saying: Im

not turning around, I know youre lying. And I said: No, dude, its a bear. He starts bounding towards us,

so I grabbed Tabor and we started running for our lives. So if it wasnt for the cat that bear couldve comeover and ate Stinson.


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On the second day at Yosemite, Tabor mysteriously vanished. The three of them went looking for her,

along with a few other campers that they befriended. The search lasted for three hours, until Stinson spotted

her snoozing on the lower branches of a walnut tree, drowsily watching them.

Soon afterward, they noticed a group of people repelling on a mountainside. Behind them, a huge black

bear, another 300-pounder, appeared out of the thicket. Michael scooped up Tabor and stuck her in her

carrier so she wouldnt run. We began hollering for the people to get out of the way, he says. That bear

had a look about him, just woken up from his hibernation and hungry as hell. I saw this big guy had turned

around and charged at the bear. The bear froze and started running away from the man. I thought he was

trying to catch the bear and it just shocked me. But I guess thats the way to get rid of the bear. Later Id

use this experience when me and Kyle got chased by stampeding cows in Montana.

Despite all the wildlife encounters, Michael looks back at their Yosemite trip as a blessed time, listening to

music, cooking and looking up at the stars at night, while Bobby and Tabor played chase games among the

trees. The cat would wait on one side, the dog on the other, and then one of them would pounce, usually

Tabor. They tussled on the grass the way puppies and kittens do and slept with their paws tangled around

each other. Other tourists couldnt believe I had a cat, let alone that the cat and dog whos a pit-bull are

friends.

Taking a cat into Yosemite, the wildest wilderness crawling with bears, cougars and rattlesnakes , was

madness, Michael admits now, but I wanted Tabor to see it, to understand that the world wasnt

all street corners and freeways.

Always drawn to forbidding places and back roads, Michael often found himself lost. On the way to

Montana, he became stranded in Idaho. He found it tricky getting rides with Kyle and the cat in tow. In the

sweltering heat, theywandered around bleak little towns with a litter of strewn trailers, gun shops and

funeral parlors.They stopped outside the WalMart store in Mountain Home, a featureless backwater that

takes pride in its homespun image, its churchgoing and its rodeos. Wed all but given up, Michael says,

since it had been five days since their last ride, when this guy walked towards us, looking like a terrorist.

He had a six-shooter on one hip, a six-shooter on the other and a nine-millimeter strapped to his leg.


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The heavily tattooed stranger, covered in skull jewelry and accompanied by an equally intimidating pit-

bull, came up to them and asked: Are you the guys on the internet? Days earlier, as its illegal to

hitchhike in Idaho, Kyle had put up an ad on Craigslist with their photos that said, Father, son and cat need

a ride to Montana.

Noticing a tattoo across his chunky forearm: Bad to the bone, Michael thought of the Craigslist killers the

surfers talked about and a sense of unease momentarily rushed over him, but then he heard himself saying,

Yeah, thats us.

Well, my names Jesus Christ and todays your lucky day. I gotta ride for you, he had replied, walking

away. In a flash, Jesus Christ returned with another guy with a green four-door Corolla. They put Tabor and

their backpacks in and Jesus and his pit-bull got in front. They drove two blocks to a monolithic white

church and parked out front was a shimmering dark-green Cadillac with the license plate: JC.

That was how Jesus Christ ended up driving them to Montana in a vintage Cadillac. He turned out to be an

evangelist who liked to quote passages from the Bible and persuade unbelievers to give themselves to

Christ. He was also a fearless driver, swerving and sliding all over the backcountry roads. In the middle of

all this, Tabor was snoozing all the way. I thought he was trying to kill us, Kyle admits, I was scared we

wouldnt make it to Montana in one piece or that wed end up buried in the middle of some desert.

They turned onto the dirt road and the car raced along a hairpin turn. When Jesus left them on the side of

the road in swirl of dust in Dillon, Montana, Michael remembers feeling shaken about hitching a ride with a

drunk. This guy was obviously insane and out of his mind. I felt bad. Kyles just a kid and doesnt know

any better and poor Tabor didnt have any choice. This bond had developed between us that I know I

wouldve laid down my life for her in a heartbeat, yet I was putting her in danger.


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The day stretched out ahead, long and empty, as they got lost along desolate rutted roads that seem

to lead to nowhere.By midday, the only signs of life in the heat-shimmering emptiness was a jackrabbit, a

couple wild turkeys ambling across the road and a train whistling past. Passing a collapsing red barn,

rusting mobile billboards and a scattering of mustangs on the amber prairies, they were worn, hungry and

the cat was complaining. They swung into a grassy expanse with cottonwood and golden willow trees,

unrolled their gear and started playing cards to kill some time before moving on. A lone cow suddenly

showed up in the not-too-far-off distance. The weirdest thing happened, Michael recounts, I start to feed

Tabor and we look back in the same direction and theres a few more cows coming down the hill. Having

worked on a farm, he knew if the cattle were looking in your direction, they were probably heading your

way. It was early summer, calving season, and cows could get territorial.

They heard the ground rumbling and thats when they saw hundreds of rangy longhorns.Behind them, the

swelling herd, lowing and scraping, surged towards them. Kyle started packing frantically. Michael,

holding the cat, ran into a cluster of cottonwoods, thinking the cows werent going to run into the trees.

Tabor was totally freaking out, trying to jump into the trees. I could feel her little heart racing as Im

trying to hang onto her. She dug her claws into me, raking both of my hands badly. I felt nothing as I was

so scared about dropping her because she wouldve been trampled. The cows were so close we couldve

touched them.

With the cows, just a few yards away, closing in on them with a thunderous force, he yelled back to Kyle to

bluff charge them. Waving his arms and shouting, Kyle ran at them. The herd backed off momentarily for

them to make their escape. We ran like hell and made it over thefence, just barely. The cows were still

pissed off and following us on the other side of the fence. We were standing back in the road, with me

bleeding all over the place and Kyle from Portland shaking like a leaf, saying: What the fuck was that,

Groundscore? I told him that was a stampede if I ever saw one.

------------------------------------------------------

More than 10 months passed, Ron Buss was starting to lose hope of ever seeing his cat again. He still

dreamed about her. He had a recurring dream in which an emaciated little cat with worn paws, dying as it

tries to find its way back home through the woods. Thoughts about what mightve happened haunted him.


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My imagination went wild, he says, wondering if she mightve been hit by acar, trapped somewhere

and starved to death, stolen and taken to a vivisection lab or for some crazy persons experiments.I know

there are bad people out there that do terrible things to animals. I always locked my cats in on

Halloween because you hear about animals being sacrificed. I was hoping on the positive side that some

little old lady found her and she was bringing joy to someone elses life. The big question was is she still

alive?

Everyone kept telling him shes probably dead and to get another cat. It was deeply wounding. Who has

the right to decide what moves you, he asks, and which deaths are tragic and which arent? Any little

creature or person dying alone and in pain has its own tragedy. He prayed every night, lit candles,

considered going to a psychic, cat-whisperers; but his grief only deepened by his susceptibility to

mysticism.

The night before he got the call about his long-lost pet, ten months after she disappeared, Ron was thinking

that he wasnt able to move on and had moments of melancholy where he couldnt stop crying. The

hardest part was dealing with the lack of closure. I was just falling apart and suffering a loneliness that I

never felt before. Creto felt it, too. He never stopped looking for his sister. If I lost them both I

wouldve just crawled in a hole and died.

As time went on and his desperation grew, he tried to lose himself in work and focused his attention on

his remaining cat. Love is elastic as far as animals are concerned, the more you have the more can spread

it amongst them. I took what I lost in Mata and was condensing it into her brother. I took Creto on more

trips, made him a medicinal cat and took him around hospitals and terminal wards to spread a little

happiness. He seemed to enjoy the fuss and distraction.

Then, on June 15th2013, on his way to catch a flight to Austin, Texas for a wake of a friend, Ron picked up

a message on his cell phone that evening from a vet in Montana. Helena, Montana? This is the craziest

thing Ive ever heard, I thought. When I got that call tears just ran down my face. I immediately started

calling my father, my sister and everyone I knew. I didnt go to Texas. I was so overwhelmed, I stayed

home.


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-------------------------------------------------------------------

Walking for miles through the darkness, Michael and Kyle reached Helena, Montana just as the sun rose

over the mountains. The town was dead. The wide boulevards, vintage storefrontsa barber shop, an old

cinema, a liquor store that sold ammunition, a general store with a century-old soda fountain looked like

an abandoned Western movie set. Walter Eberts house sits in a peaceful cul-de-sac, lying in the shadow of

the Northern Rockies. When Michael turned up on his doorstep with a cat clinging to his shoulder like a

caterpillar, he stood transfixed, couldnt believe what he was seeing. Walter is an old man now, almost 80,

and when he opened the door he looked at me as though Id grown two heads. The idea that wed walked

across America with a cat on my back for thousands of miles was crazy to him. Just plain crazy.

Michael wanted to show Kyle and Tabor around his adopted hometown. In the summertime, the scenery

and sparseness of Montana was otherworldly. And then there were all the animals the bison, lynx,

grizzlies and moose. From the moment he arrived in the fall of 1981, Michael was spellbound with

Montana, whose raw, rugged beauty had always lured adventurers and escapists. All you could see is a

little landscape that went on forever and a lot of sky and not a soul for miles, he remembers and where he

found the wild, uncultivated place he was looking for. He was 16 and talked his way into a job delivering

milk at a dairy, found a room in a cheap boarding house, enrolled at the local high school and tried to

reassemble his life here among the saw-tooth mountains and sun-burnt plains.

Everything fell apart quite quickly once the authorities discovered he was under-age and living on his own.

The sheriff who had driven Michael to the state line took pity on the sorry-looking teenage runaway, gave

him $20 dollars and said good luck. He told him that he could stay in Montana if he found an adult

willing to be his legal guardian. As soon as my ride dropped me off in Helena, I went straight to

Alcoholics Anonymous, he says and found Walter Ebert, then a recovering alcoholic, who would becomehis foster father and remained a caring, cocooning presence in his life for over 30 years.


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That kid had so much potential, says Ebert sadly, a former Vietnam vet and a retired army-training

officer who now lives alone with his cat. He worked hard, got his GED and had all sorts of scholarship

offers from fancy colleges. For a while, he was doing good, made a decent life for himself.

His modest split-level wood-and-stone ranch, which he built himself and renovated over the years with

Michaels help, is filled with hand-crafted furniture and framed pictures of Michael and his twin, John

Patrick, when they were 17 years old, along with another foster child he adopted. Recalling the day he first

met Michael as a runaway, he says, This skinny, good-looking kid with sad blue eyes walks right to up me

and asks if Id be his legal guardian because he didnt want to be kicked out of Montana, and I said, Sure, I

would. He opened his home to him that day, glad to be able to help and happy for the company. After

his marriage had broken up, he was very lonely and attempted to fill the void in her life with AA meetings,

his collection of classic cars and wounded teenage strays.

Once he finally left home Michael lost touch with his family, now scattered across the country, and wanted

nothing to do with the parents who had caused so much pain and grief. In time, at the age of 26, he would

finally meet his mother, but that encounter, at his fathers funeral, was awkward and empty. Now recently

widowed for the second time, she lives in a mobile home in an Arizona desert town. Last summer while I

was visiting Walter in Montana with Tabor I got a phone call from her out of the blue, Michael says of the

mother whom he doesnt even bother to name nor describe. Shed seen the article about me taking Tabor

back home in her local paper. I used to hate her, but I dont anymore. Whatever she did to me, it doesnt

matter now. Shes 78 and a widow, so I have to forgive her.

Seeking to explain Michaels tramping life, Ebert is at a loss: He likes to live like a wild animal. Wears

the same filthy clothes for days at a time. Ive offered him my house, but he doesnt want it. Says he

has no need for possessions. The street is not a good place to put all your worries and dreams. But he

has his demons with the drinking. Ive almost gone bankrupt many times trying to help him. Money

is like water in Mikes hands.I guesspeople dont really change, they are who they are, he wonders out

loud, adding that Michael possesses an extraordinary compassion.Hes had more than his share of misery,

yet he could be caring to a fault. Hes always looking after others down on their luck and rescuing animals,

even though he can barely help himself.


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Ebert still has the long-haired grey tabby called Gus Michael found 13 years ago in a vacant, cactus-strewn

lot, while visiting the house one summer. Soon after his arrival, he suggested that that they take Tabor to

the vet to have her checked out because he was worried about his cat Gus, now 14.

Michael got a bad feeling and was growing seriously worried. He thought the cat was perfectly fine, but did

not protest since he was staying in his foster fathers house. On the way to the vet in Helena, he sat in the

backseat of the car with Tabor and steeled himself. Dr Armstrong thought Tabor was healthy and in great

shape, especially considering the adventure she had been on. Then he looked at Michael and, after an

uncomfortable pause, told him that the cat had a chip.

For a moment, Michael stood there, thunderstruck, unsure what to do.His eyes welled up and he

walked out of the surgery to smoke a cigarette and pull himself together. She had a microchip, he thought,

which meant somebody was missing her. As soon as we found out Tabor actually had a home, morally, for

me, it was important to get the cat back to her owner. Although I knew it would crush me.

Afterwards, he sat alone in Walters backyard, in silence and in tears, chain smoking and imagining a

future without the cat. I thought what an incredible difference she made to my life during our ten-and-half

months together and I wondered how I would cope once she was gone, he says, trailing off into a long,devastating silence. Im homeless and its tough. Depression is a big thing out here on the streets.

Whatever else was happening around me, that cat made every single day joyful and in that special,

mysterious way that only cats can. The hardest thing was that Tabor didnt know anything had changed but,

even as we left the vet, I knew what was coming next.

Later that night, Walter made the call to the cats owner Ron Buss, while Michael slumped on the sofa,

crying. Tabor jumped on my lap, nuzzling me, he remembers. Cats arevery intuitive creatures. Theyre

good at picking up on emotional changes in people and comforting them. I was caught halfway between

feeling guilty about taking Tabor on a road trip and pissed with this guy for not having tried hard enough.

Wed been in Portland together for three months before hitting the road, just a few blocks away from where

Ron and Tabor lived.


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Before putting the phone down, he heard Walter say: Mike feels terrible about taking the cat and wants to

do the right thing and bring her back home. But he wants to have one last trip with her if you can trust him.

Mikes a good man, rest assured hell bring her back to you.

At first, Ron thought he was taking a gamble in getting his cat back, particularly since the microchip

company offered to pay up to $500 in return services. We spoke for a long time over the phone. His foster

father told me his life story and that Michael was a genuinely good person, in spite of his disapproval of

him being a professional hobo.

Somehow, the next morning on June 17th, the story of the Homeless Man Saves Lost Oregon Cat and

Travels 3,600 Miles to Take her Back Home broke into the headlines of all the local Montana newspapers.

It would be syndicated in regional papers across the country and the Oregon television and radio stations

were calling Michael before they reached Portland.

------------------------------------------------------

With a heavy heart, Michael took the long way back to take Tabor home, knowing it would be their final

journey together. He and Kyle tried to enjoy this last adventure and the scenery as much they could, but

there was a lingering sense of sadness, mentally preparing to lose his cat, his constant companion.

Passing through Idaho on the way back, a young bearded cowboy in a battered Chevy truck picked them up

in Boise at a rest stop on a terrible exit. As they loaded their bags, Tabor refused get into the pickup and

broke off the leash. She ran along the side of the highway with cars flashing past. Im pursuing the cat

along this busy freeway, Michael recalls, laughing. And Im thinking, Oh god, not now. After five

minutes, I walked up to Tabor calmly and grabbed her. I was a nervous wreck afterwards.

The cowboy took them to a roadside country-western bar, a wooden shack on a stretch of dirt road, with

deer heads and dartboards on the walls, and Johnny Cash and Emmylou Harris on the jukebox. It turned out


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to be a backwoods pitstop for Hells Angels, truckers and whores. Everyone was fascinated by Tabor not

least because she had strolled into the bar and leapt on a barstool beside Michael and Kyle as though it was

normal. They were falling over themselves to make a fuss of this strange and clever cat and one of the

bikers even offered a thousand dollars for her.

Happily accepting shots of whiskey from the local folks enamored by the cat, Michael sat at the bar

gloomily, barely speaking to Kyle, noticing the bikers or the music. Everything was blurring. He consumed

several whiskies in silence and took the opportunity to spill his misery. As Tabor moved onto his lap,

stroking her fur, he started to cry so hard until the tears had run dry. No one, he thought, could

comprehend his broken heart and the hollowness he felt at that moment.

The bearded cowboy, leaning over, whispered to Kyle, When I check out I want to be reborn as Michaels

cat. Ive never seen anyone love anything so damn much.

------------------------------------------------------

On the way to Ron Busss house, Michael walked down the street in a daze, cradling Tabor in his arms like

a baby. His hands were trembling, his stomach tied in knots and he was on the verge of wild, inconsolable

tears. All the homeless kids tried to persuade him to keep the cat. I kept telling them I was just the

caretaker, keeping her out of harms way and making sure she had a safe passage home. Even so, I was

about to say goodbye to my best friend. Im sure she felt it too.

The cat, sensing his unease, kept staring up into his eyes, confused and concerned, trying to figure out what

was wrong. As we got closer to her house, I can see Tabor feeling anxious, her ears twitching, her paws

sweating. When we got up to the front steps, her little body tensed and she scrunched herself into a little

ball against my chest. When Ron Buss opened the door, I felt kind of embarrassed. What could I say? Im

sorry, Ron, heres your cat. Sorry I took her to California and Montana.It was awkward at first, but he

introduced himself and took us through to his big backyard.


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He showed them his homey urban garden with miniature cornfields and a small vegetable patch, where

he grew tomatoes, asparagus and green beans.Still clinging to Tabor, Michael immediately saw another

cat, a handsome tuxedo cat with a moustache, weaving out of the corn plants. He didnt spook or run

and hide. I saw that Tabor was looking at him too.

The day before returning to Portland to take Tabor/Mata home, Michael called Ron from the biker bar in

Idaho to say he would be there the following afternoon. He turned up, fleetingly, along with his family of

homeless friends and five dogs. What seems mystifyingly weird, says Ron, is that they brought the cat

back on June 21st

. Its particularly ironic because the first time she went missing on December 20th

2011,

the animal shelter in Vancouver called on June 21st to say shed been found.

Back in his cozy, book-lined living room, late-afternoon sun slanting in through the bay windows, the

squadron of homeless men propped themselves on the couches or cross-legged on floor among their

scruffy mongrels. Ron asked them to tell him some stories of being on the road with Mata. They told me

about camping in Yosemite, the bears and the buffalos.

The black-and-white tomcat kept gazing at Mata and following her at a respectful distance. She growled

and hissed, ran behind the sofa. After a while she anxiously started exploring around all the rooms as if

terror waited for her in every corner. Bizarrely, this small fearless creature who went off seeking out

strangers, fought off full-grown bears, survived coyotes and stampeding cattle had suddenly lost her nerve.

When Mata finally reappeared in the living room again, she and the tomcat started sniffing each other.

There was a glint of recognition in her eyes and she rolled over and trilled. It was then that Michael knew

that this had to be her brother.

It cant have been easy for Michael giving up the cat, says Ron, Hes a manic-depressive. I was seriously

contemplating letting him keep her. So I thought, Gosh, if she really loves him more than me and wants

to stay with him, Ill let her decide. But even after 10 months, Mata and Creto remembered each other,

so I couldnt tear them apart again.


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In those tumultuous first weeks after his cat had gone missing, Ron claims he went out looking for her,

day after day, knocking on doors and putting up posters. Well, wed never seen those posters, says Kyle ,

considering they spent weeks scanning all the lost-cat fliers in the area. We even saw posters put up by

12-year-old children who lost their cats, but never one for Tabor.

Locating a lost cat is a daunting task even under the best of circumstances. Cats hide in amazing places, so

she couldve gone unnoticed for a long time, but its strange that no one apparently ever reported seeing

Mata even though she was living only a 10-minute walk from Rons house for three months. Then there is

the extraordinary random chance that she strayed a few yards from home only to end up travelling

thousands of miles to get back.Kyle, for one, feels conflicted about Michael giving up the cat. Itsobvious that Ron Buss loves that cat, but Im not sure he deserves her. Hes lost the cat once, fine, but

twice is just carelessness. It mustve been hard enough for her to lose that home and adapt to another life on

the streets, then going back to be a housecat.

As they sat in his living room talking, Ron showed them a stack of photos of his cats as kittens and then the

moment stretched out and became awkward. He had planned a homecoming party. I bought pizza and

soda pop and thought wed have a little celebration. In the meantime, four local news trucks appeared

outside the house for the reunion. As soon as Michael saw them, he wanted to leave. I had a feeling that

mightve been why he came an hour early. I hadnt even put the pizzas in the oven and Michael said, Oh,

we gotta go.

When he handed the cat back, Michael gave her a kiss goodbye and like a ghost vanished as quickly as he

appeared. As soon as they walked out of the house, he broke down. His friends, stood by quietly, knowing

that there werent any words that could possibly console him at that moment. I felt grateful for their

silence and support.

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A gay nudist beach seems an odd setting for a picnic with strangers and a cat. Its swampy marshes,

swarms of mosquitoes, swelled middle-aged men are hardly in keeping with the palm-strewn paradise

that free bathing brings to mind. Its difficult to know where to look or pretend its another Sunday out.

Walking the cat on the leash along the sandy banks of the Columbia River Gorge, 40 miles outside of

Portland, Ron explains that this is Matas first excursion since her homecoming three weeks ago.

Fortunately the cat is undisturbed by the nudity on this strange patch of paradise, where clothing is

optional and sex and drugs are banned. I think Michael is a kind and loving person, says Ron with a gap-

tooth smile, scooping up the cat in his arms. My proof of this is reflected in the way he treated Mata,

especially as he returned her to me a better cat than she was before she left. I believe we get out of our

animals what we put into them. Although I did a great job raising her from a motherless kitten, Michael

developed her personality in ways I find amazing. For example, he taught her to sit on your shoulder and

how to walk on a leash. Thats almost impossible to do with a cat. Ill always love Michael in a brotherly

and spiritual way for treating Mata so well. Since her return, her brother and I are the happiest weve ever

been. Once again, were a team: Mata Hairi, Creto and Papa.

He felt blessed, by extraordinary luck, fate or maybe God. How else, he asks, can one explain the

miracles of getting his cat back for the second time after that rogue neighbour kidnapped and

dumped her in the woods. The first time I lost her, I made a promise to God bring Mata back and Ill do

XY and Z. When I got her back, I didnt do XY or Z and then she disappeared again. As the tenth month

went by, I prayed hard and my prayers were answered. The chances of someone finding her and taking her

to a shelter and then later a vet and scanning for a microchip were pretty slim. Its two in a million. You

cant imagine what kind offeeling of relief and happiness that is.

Of course there are many intriguing stories of cats travelling thousands of miles to get home or being

reunited after several months or years. Jeffrey Masson, animal psychologist and author of The Nine

Emotional Lives of Cats, offers an insight into the complexities of the feline heart: Mostly cats wander out

of pure curiosity. The purpose of curiosity in the evolution of any species is obvious to gather useful

information or find out about potential friends or enemies. There is the pleasure component, too, its fun to

see something new.


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One weekend in February 2014 back in California, Michael sat over coffee, in wounded silence, with the

sunlight streaming around him like sun falling across a ruin. Taking Tabor home was a very sad day, he

says after a long while, his mournful blue-grey eyes misting. There were seven grown men crying the day

we gave her away. But the minute I handed her back, I was thinking I gotta get out of there and left town.

I didnt want to be in Portland for the next week or two crying about the cat. It was awful. We went

camping in the woods, had a big old fire. We had a big party and put the speakers up in the trees. That first

week without Tabor, I mustve cried about 35 times.

That was the last time he drank, he says, and hes been sober since.

Those first few weeks without the cat, Michael concedes he was a mess. There many teary and sleepless

nights when he sometimes sat out in their old UPS squat, imagining her come shooting out of the bushes,

tail up in the air, trilling. Ive learned even if you lose something really great remember that old adage,

if you really love something, set it free? Thats kind of what it felt like with Tabor. I still think giving the

cat back to her owner was a positive thing, but the journeys with Tabor have changed me.

Its funny, he says, how love seems to always turn up at the most unexpected times and to bring with it all

sorts of unintended consequences. My backpack is 40 pounds lighter. For such a little creature shes left a

big, big hole that I dont think Ill ever be able to fill, he reflects, counting the measure of his loss. If I

loved that cat any more, Id blow up anddie. Ive had other animals for 16 years; Ive had girlfriends and

lovers for 10 or 15 years. I had this cat for 10 months yet she was the love of my life. You know what that

cat did me? Shes lightened me. Im happier and calmer.

He still misses the cat and there isnt a day in which she does not occupy his thoughts, but admits hes had

his life transformed by their brief friendship. Tabors made me interested in the world again, he says, the

conflicting emotions flickering across his face. She taught me no matter how bad things got its still good


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to be alive. Whenever I want to feel happy I think back to those moments of us living beneath that giant old

tree in Ventura. At the time I thought maybe I was saving her life, it turned out she really sa ved mine.

Outwardly at least, Michael seems to have moved on. After spending the winter at his foster fathers in

Montana, he has resumed his life in Portland, sharing an apartment with Kyle, hoping to somehow establish

some sort of sense of stability. His friends and acquaintances constantly ask if hell get another cat and he

always replies: I dont want another cat. But deep down, I know theyll show up and find me when I

least expect it. Tabor isnt the first cat nor the last, but we were truly soul mates. I carried her for 3,600

miles on my back, all over Oregon, the Californian coast, Montana and she probably only walked about

half a mile; she was like the Queen of Sheba. I will always look back on a very unusual year with a mixture

of sadness, joy and good old-fashioned longing.

11,660 words


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Britt Collins| +1 323 275 8913 |1006 Sweetzer Avenue, West Hollywood, California 90069

From: [email protected]

Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2014 01:44:22 -0400Subject: Re:

To: [email protected]

Thank you for this! I'll take a look this week, and will be back to you...

Hang in there!Rachel

On Mon, Apr 14, 2014 at 11:47 PM, Britt Collins wrote:

Hi Rachel,

Here you go... (attached and pasted below)

Sorry I broke down in tears, but I'm literally living in purgatory at the moment.

B

Travels with Mata Hairi: The Cat Who Saved Me

by Britt Collins

A missing cat. Two desperate, broken men. A whirlwind road trip across the West Coast. The

disappearance of Mata Hairi, a cat with two names and a secret past, turned into a real-life mystery that

made international headlines. She travelled 3,600 miles chasing adventure: living among surfers in a

Californian beach town, dining with cowboys in Idaho, surviving a cattle stampede in Montana and

encounters with bears at Yosemite National Park. Her 10-and-half-month odyssey began in Portland,

Oregon on September 10th2012.

It was about midnight, raining and thundering, and the streets were deserted. Michael King and Josh

Stinson were rushing back to their shelter, their clothes dripping wet, shoes water-logged. They saw a

scraggly-looking cat, scared and soaked to the bone, crouching under a restaurant table. She was skinny,she was dirty and she was hurt and she looked up at me and asked for help, recounts Michael, a rangy andsoftly spoken 48-year-old drifter with long silver-streaked hair and beard and a deeply lined face, scoured

by the seasons. Living on the street, the last thing in the world I wanted was a cat. There was a bunch oftraffic on Hawthorne street and I was afraid shed get run over. I couldnt leave her.
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]


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It came from deep in here, explains his friend Josh Stinson, touching his heart. A wiry 26-year-old with

glasses and dreadlocks, who simultaneously looks well-educated and homeless, he was an ex-navy man

from a small town in the Mid-west and cared about things, especially vulnerable animals. She didnt

struggle or complain when I handed her over to Michael, but just stared at me gratefully with those big

eyes, the wet fur stuck to her face. She knew right off shed been saved.

When they brought the cat back to their squat at the back of a UPS parking lot, Michael noticed that one of

her eyes was puffy and swollen. He went back into the rain to buy some cat food, leaving her with Stinson.

When she saw the can of Meow Mix, he says she opened her mouth and let out a faint, hungry squeak andjust wolfed it down. From the first night, she took to us like peas and carrots.

Falling on hard times, Michael had been homeless for many years and sometimes found himself helping

strays that crossed his path, but he sensed this one was special. The grey-and-white tabby was a beauty,

perhaps no more than three or four years old, with tiger-striped patches and soulful green eyes. She didnthave a collar, so they assumed she mustve been a stray and named her Tabor, after the Tabor Hill Cafwhere she had been found her.

------------------------------------------------------

On a breezy late-summer afternoon, Ron Buss was rushing home in quiet anticipation. It was Labor Day

and nobody was around. Portland was like a ghost town. The only sounds were the crows cawing, the

scuffle of falling pine cones. Most weekends, his rambling white-and-gold bungalow on the corner of SE

37th Avenue was full-to-bursting with his musician and artist friends. He had plans to go away to the

seaside with his cats.

When he approached the house and saw the empty picnic table on his front lawn, where Mata Hairi usually

waited for him, he knew something was wrong. She spent her days roaming a three-block patch in the

peaceful neighbourhood of neatly pruned roses and shady trees. Thinking she mightve been chased away

by a dog and hiding somewhere, he searched all the nearby backyards and sheds, posted fliers, combed the

area in vain.


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Losing her like that was devastating, says Ron, a short, stocky man in his fifties, with salt-and-pepper

hair, in a black Ministry rock T-shirt and Converse low-tops. There were days when I felt if I didnt get her

back it would destroy me. Id sit with her gone and think back to the time when I was raising them as

kittens.

Mata was part of a litter of five kittens that had been abandoned under a neighbours porch. Ron fed the

malnourished two-week-old orphans with an eyedropper and gave them the life that could have been just as

easily denied. He kept two and named them after characters in an American cartoon show from the 70s

Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp.

An Oregon native, Ron grew up in a middle-class suburb of Portland and, after university in Eugene,

moved back. Lured by the cheap rents and green spaces, the once-rundown southeast area was buzzing

with Art Deco shopfronts, retro bars and artisan coffeehouses that reflected the citys youthful, eclectic

spirit. One of the reasons he bought the house was to give his cats a safe place to roam. He had

unconventional ideas about raising the kittens and took them everywhere: friends houses, excursions to the

beach, birthday parties with their other three littermates. I wanted them to have rich experiences and bring

them up like children. I took them to work every day and the customers adored them, says Ron, who used

to own a storage company, a family-run business that he sold to his brother-in-law, before opening a guitar

and collectibles store. They loved to travel and anywhere I went they were happy to go with me.

Sitting on his porch in the July sunshine, he thinks back to the weeks of frantic searching. Everyone kept

telling him to get another cat and move on. I couldnt live not knowing, he says, and missed the quiet

intimacies of their daily routine, her sat on the kitchen counter watching him scramble eggs and waiting for

him when he came home in the evenings. Mata was like a child to me and I mourned her daily. Theres a

spiritual connection between us. If it stems from anything, its probably getting them as tiny orphans.

Theyre so important to me, every decision I make I consider my cats. I had so many plans to grow old with

them. My dad doesnt understand it. He says thats just pathetic. You can go anywhere, do anything, but

you just want to be around your cats. Nothing made me happier.


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Her loss consumed him. At home alone whenever his lodger was out, especially at night, despair slipped

over him like a shroud. The pain just wouldnt go away. I guess I am very lonely and invested everything

into my cats. I was crumbling and Creto was the only thing holding me together.

Even her littermate had become dispirited and sat on the porch every night waiting for her to come home.

He was half the cat he was and wouldnt even roam the neighbourhood like he us ed to. Creto never

stopped looking for her.

This wasnt the first time Mata strayed. Once she jumped into the trunk of a neighbors car and went all

the way up to Vancouver. Deep in the woods, he opened his trunk to unload his camping gear and the cat

sprang out and shot into the pines. This neighbor was already known for his violent past. He told me

three days after she went missing, says Ron.I think he lied because he disliked animals and all the

neighborhood cats were afraid of him. Mata would hiss whenever she saw him. The morning she went

missing, both the cats were locked in my house. When I got home the back door was ajar and things were

askew and someone left their bottled water on my bedroom nightstand. This person was evil enough to

have pulled such a stunt. Im sure it was done maliciously.

During those six months, she lived wild until someone, mercifully, found her and handed her over to a

humane shelter, which scanned her chip and called Ron Buss. She likes to ramble, he muses. Shes very

inquisitive and too smart for her britches.

------------------------------------------------------

Across the city, Mata, now called Tabor, had quickly settled into her new digs in the UPS parking lot on the

edgy enclave of Hawthorne Boulevard. She was looking healthier, too, less rangy and her puffy eye was

healing. She played for hours, stalking insects and tossing and losing her new catnip mice and balls.

Sipping black coffee out of a dented tin cup, Michael recounts how she liked to play hide-and-seek with

them, vanishing behind a bush with her tail poking out, thinking, she was well hidden. Wed hear her


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rustling in the bushes, yowling, looking for one of her toys. Shed make her own, too, out of fallen leaves,

feathers, cigarette packs.

Giving the cat breakfast and leaving her in the squat during the day while they worked the streetspanhandling became routine. Every time we went back to the UPS lot to bed down for the night, andcalled out her new name, shed shoot out of a bush, says Michael. I figured it was just the food that hadmade her come back. It was comforting to be able to help someone in the same position as myself.

He went from feeding a hungry stray to his spending days feeling worried, hoping to God that Taborwould be at the squat when we got back. After a week, they stopped leaving her behind. Id toss her onthe top of my pack and hauled her around all day. From that moment, he explains, she became a parrotcat. Every time we packed ready to go, shed jump on my shoulder. It took some practice to carry a 10-pound cat and all her food and dishes. Sometimes I felt like a ship in the ocean walking around with a full-

grown cat swaying on my backpack. When we went down the street, shed jump back and forth from my

backpack to Stinsons.

Michael and Tabor became a big hit on the streets of southeast Portland, where the cat, sometimes perched

on his shoulder or curled on his rucksack with Buddha-like calmness. And it seemed there was no end to

the number of people who gravitated towards them. The cat became a celebrity, says Kyle, an intense 19-

year-old with long shaggy hair, who spent time with them on the road . Everyone loved her and would stop

and take pictures and give us money. We never asked for it.

During most of his years on the street, Michael lived close to the bone, subsisting on the kindness of others.

The cat had suddenly lifted his spirits and his panhandling earnings. The cat was a rainbow in a dark

world, he says of the little tabby who provided him with companionship and unconditional love that he

didnt know he needed. With Tabor on my back, people stopped me and wanted to talk and help us. After

a while we were calling Hawthorne the Green Mile for the money me and the cat would make just walking

down the street.

All the same, he had the wild hope they would get the cat back where she belonged. Watching her sleeping,

Michael started wondering about the kind of life she lived before. How long shed been solitary when hefound her? If she had been dumped and became a street cat? They scanned all the missing pet posters

around the area for weeks. Stinson came up with the idea of putting a picture of Tabor on Craigslists, thego-to place for lost and found pets. After three months of caring for her and posting notes online, when no

one came forward to reclaim her, Stinson turned to Michael and said, Shes yours, Groundscore. It wasthe name by which his close friends knew him because he was constantly finding money or other lost items

on the ground.


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Sprawled out across the sidewalk with all his worldly possessions, Michael was in his element beside his

ragtag band of buddies, outside a Chinese take-away, on a block glowing with red and yellow neon lights.

Theres so much love on the streets, he says, firing up a roll-up, his hands scarred and calloused, his

fingernails encrusted with dirt. We all looked after one another. Like when the Titanic sank, those

survivors had camaraderie. Mostly in their twenties, this tight-knit group were bound together by their sad

circumstances and restlessness. They saw themselves as kind of refugees from society, tumbling from

doorstep to doorstep and trawling around their few belongings and childhood scars. Having grown up with

a father who terrified him and spent much of his adolescence on the run, Michael had an instinctive

empathy for troubled street kids.

Kyle, a skinny street kid, in denim overalls and a ragged sweater, who lived on and off the streets of

Portland since he was 14, describes his relationship with him as best friend and mentor, and says

Michaels a really good guy and the first adult who made sense to me. The tenth child born to a mother in

prison, Kyle was adopted by a Harvard-educated lawyer and his social-worker wife, but never fit in

anywhere and thinks of himself as a nobody from nowhere. Theres nothing romantic about waking up

in cold doorways and feeling useless, he adds, but his happiest times were all the late nights of drinking

cheap beer while bantering about art, politics and world news with Michael and Stinson. Wed sit around

smoking and swapping stories about our adventures. We all felt a part of something. And Tabor was one of

the gang too.

-------------------------------------

In early December, when winter blew in and the landscape turned gray and ghostly, Michael decided to

leave Portland after his birthday.. He was hoping to have a grand party, but they ended up celebrating

among the mossy graves of the dead under a wintry, moonless sky. We got kicked out of four different

drinking spots and went to the cemetery because the cops didnt mess with us there. I was turning 48 and

wanted to make a big deal out of it mainly because Im twice the age of everybody I hang out with.


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That night, he announced his intention of taking the cat on a road trip to the rest of his homeless friends.

Everyone, aside from Kyleand Stinson, looked at me as though Id lost my mind. Someone said: And

how are you planning to travel around with a catfirst-class or coach?

Initially Michael had thought this was crazy, but felt he had no other choice. He also wanted to show his

feline companion the sightsit was one of those compulsions of the heart. I later discovered Tabor, unlikemost cats, loved car rides.

Michael had spent ten years wandering America, drifting like tumbleweed and finding himself among

strangers to help him forget all the sad things that happened to him . When I walked out the door and lefteverything behind, I didnt realise I was walking into homelessness, he says quietly. I thought I was justgetting away for a while.

At the time, he was living back in St Louis and making a good living as a chef working 60-hour weeks

while looking after his dying friend. I didnt like the way the hospital was taking care of him and he didntwant to be there. So I brought him home, pretty much kidnapped him. He was a high school buddy and my

closest friend. Wed been living together for 13 years, doing our thing, sharing the rent. When his frienddied on October 20th 2003, something shifted inside of him. I looked around and thought: Whats all this?We had a house full of stuff, a driveway full of stuff, a car, a boat and a trailer. I didnt want anything. Iwanted to be light on my feet. So I packed two backpacks, walked out the door, and put my thumb out at

the nearest highway.

He was escaping from grief, boredom and familiarity into the enchantment of the unknown. For a few

years, Michael drifted from city to city, flitting through peoples lives and taking up with other transients he

met on the road. Slowly he began to feel rootless and that he belonged nowhere. Before his money ran out,

he went to Los Angeles, figuring its a big place and there would be plenty of jobs. I worked in a car wash,

did some gardening, moving furniture. Working with illegals, border jumpers, political-asylum seekers was

humbling. I was prepared to do anything, but sell medical marijuana on the Venice boardwalk.

There were long stretches where he couldnt earn a dime. After months of washing in the public toilets andwalking around in the baking heat looking for work, Michael felt a complete failure. Alexei, a Russianguy I met during my stint at the car wash, said no would hire me because Im too negative and it shows.This coming from a hustler who lived with his parents. He worked at a supermarket and, promising me a

job, introduced me to the deli counter, the bakery. Well, I felt like a dictator visiting a factory while Alexei

paraded me around and I walked cautiously, like Ceausescu, along the aisles observing with a howinteresting expression and shaking hands with all the cashiers. Greetings! Glorious workers of Ralphs.


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Eventually Michael got a job in an Italian restaurant as a cook. The wages were low, the hours were long,

but he felt grateful. He began the job diligently, but after a few weeks started eating and drinking

everything in sight. I started very malnourished but gradually Id spend considerable time in the cellareating handfuls of raspberries and imported Parmesan. Then

travels with mata hairi original.docx

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