Butthead: A True Tail

Everyone thinks they choose their pets. You go to the shelter, you look into a pair of pleading eyes, you sign the papers. But anyone who has ever been owned by a cat knows the truth: cats do the choosing. And in 1994, an orange and white tabby chose us.

Mark and I were living in City Heights then, right up the block from the barrio, in what I always thought of as a “United Nations” neighborhood. Vietnamese, Mexican, Somali, Cambodian, Ethiopian, people of every culture living side by side, cooking smells mingling in the air, a dozen languages floating down the street. It was never boring. And apparently, it was also the kind of neighborhood where a cat with a sense of adventure could make a good life for himself.

One day, there he was on our front stoop. Orange and white, sturdy, self-possessed, with the unhurried air of a cat who had places to be but had decided, for the moment, that this was the place.

Now, I have to set the scene here, because the times were different. This was 1993, when cannabis was still very much illegal. Get caught with so much as a single bud and you could land in jail, and your life would be made difficult in a hundred ways. Still, Mark and I enjoyed getting high, quietly, at home, harming no one.

So one afternoon we were having a puff when this orange and white tabby came strolling up. Mark took a hit and blew the smoke into a paper bag, and I swear this is true, because this is TRUE LIFE LOVE STORIES: that cat poked his head right into the bag and proceeded to join us in getting stoned. No hesitation. Like he’d been waiting all his nine lives for someone to finally offer.

Here’s the thing about Mark: he does not like cats. He was allergic to them once (weirdly, not anymore), and he’d built a whole identity around not being a cat person. But watching this tabby emerge from the paper bag, blinking slowly, utterly content, Mark relented. Beavis & Butthead was the cartoon of the moment, and so the cat was christened: Butthead.

He would earn that name in his own interesting ways, but mostly he wore it with dignity, the way only a cat can wear an undignified name.

Butthead was never going to be an inside cat. He was an outside cat, a free agent, a cat of the canyons. We’d leave a dish of water and some tuna on the front stoop, and he’d come around to see us, accept our offerings, maybe share a paper bag, and bring us joy. Then he’d vanish for days at a time, off in the nearby canyons feasting on rodents and living whatever wild parallel life he led out there. We never asked questions. He never offered explanations. It was a good arrangement.

Still, we worried about him out there. A black cat can melt into the shadows of a canyon at night, but an orange and white cat glows like a little beacon. His lighter coloring made him easier for coyotes and other predators to spot, and those canyons were full of coyotes. Every time he disappeared, we knew he was out there running the odds in a coat that did him no favors.

And then one time he was gone longer than usual. Long enough that we started watching the stoop. Long enough that worry crept in, because somewhere along the way, between the paper bag and the tuna dishes, we had come to love that cat.

When he finally reappeared, he was bedraggled and bloody, scraped up like he’d gone a few rounds with a coyote. Knowing those canyons, he probably had. We gave him water. We gave him tuna. And yes, we got him stoned one more time with the paper bag he so enjoyed, because if any cat ever needed to take the edge off, it was Butthead that day.

Then he limped away down the street, and we never saw him again.

I like to think he knew. I like to think he came back one last time to say goodbye, to collect his final meal and his final puff from the two humans he’d adopted, before heading off to wherever brave canyon cats go. Maybe he found another stoop, another dish of tuna, another soft touch with a paper bag. Or maybe the canyon finally claimed him, as it claims many wild things eventually.

That was more than thirty years ago. We left City Heights long ago, and cannabis is legal now, and Mark and I have changed too. But we still think of him, the cat who chose us, got high with us, and left on his own terms. Somewhere in our hearts there’s still a front stoop, and a dish of tuna, and an orange and white tabby poking his head into a paper bag.

Rest easy, Butthead. You were a very good boy, and a surprisingly good smoking buddy.