MY PRINCE OF MIDNIGHT--with Apologies to Fabio

He was short and slender--almost sinewy--hair the color of sable, a rich semi-sweet chocolate brown. Eyes like mottled amber glowed out of a dark face and when he smiled, it was evident that one fang was shorter than the other, giving him a slightly off-balance appearance. He was also very short-sighted if the way he kept running into things and missing whatever he jumped on was any indication.

His name was Thibault Minuit...the Prince of Midnight...seven pounds of part-Siamese, part-who-knows-what-else.

Thibault and I met by accident--or perhaps by his design. One late afternoon, I left work to walk across the parking lot to my car when I heard a baby crying. Hoping no one had been foolish enough to leave a child unattended, I stopped, looking around--and saw him...striding purposefully toward me with the stiff-legged strut of an SS Storm Trooper on parade...one small brown cat.

He stopped in front of me and opened that crooked-fanged mouth. "Yaa-ooow." (Undoubtedly this is Siamese for Hiya, beautiful--your place or mine?)
"Go away, Cat. I've got dogs at home!" I turned and scooted for my car. He trotted behind me.

I opened the car door. He jumped in, perched himself on the top of the driver's seat and dug in his claws.

I drove home with a kitty teetering at my shoulder.

The dogs were curious. They'd never seen a cat before. Hey, Mom--he's sure a funny-looking dog! Why doesn't he bark?

The cat took one look, a deep breath, and waded into their midst, calmly convincing them that--Yes! I am, indeed, a dog...but from another country where doggies looked much, much different. Perhaps he gave them that line Data from Star Trek: the Next Generation used when he time-traveled back to 1906 San Francisco: "I'm French."

Whatever he said, his admittance was an established fact and the clamor died down, and he graciously accepted my offer of mushrooms and pepperoni pizza, then climbed on the sofa, settled himself and fell asleep, snuggled against Cindi, my beagle-dachshund, who had appointed herself his buddy.

His name came easily enough--Tyball the cat from Romeo and Juliet--a common name for a cat back then and one this English student had always wanted to use. Liking the French version better, I changed it to Thibault (which means Prince) and added a surname of Minuit (Midnight), after a romance novel of the same name with Italian heart-throb Fabio on the cover.

Thibault was truly an unusual cat. How many other felines could live with five dogs, convincing them he was one of them, came when he was called, and would walk on a leash? He was with me for twelve years, traveled from Nebraska to California in a kitty-carrier in the foot of a U-Haul, was given into the foster care of my son when the apartment owners wouldn't let me have a cat and a dog, and then...just disappeared.

My son had some gruesome theories as to Thibault's fate. I proposed a more fitting one, writing "The Cat's Letter to His Mistress," wherein said feline explains his disappearance--that he is simply an advance scout from the Cat Star, and now, having seen what he came to see, he has returned to his own planet to tell his leaders about those strange creatures called humans. The story was published in Animal Magnetism, an anthology whose royalties went to Noah's Ark and other animal rescue organizations helping out during Hurricane Katrina. I never made a cent off the story.

Thibault would have said that was only fair. "Why should you be recompensed for the time I've allowed you to spend in my company, Mistress?"


(The above picture is of Thibault, sitting in contemplative solitude, on my patio in Nebraska.)