laura hough smith

“Oh. He’s beautiful,” the workers cooed as I carried the huge stray cat in the vet’s office one spring day in 2009.
The orange Maine Coon cat wondered onto our back porch one June evening a few days prior as I prepped for a dinner we were hosting for friends. Wesley fed him bologna, and later as we ate dinner, the cat sat on the windowsill and watched us.
The stray stuck around. He had a bump between his ears that began to bleed within a few days time; $400 and an abscess drained and healed later, the stray cat we called Kitty was officially ours and he had a new name: Bump.
The evening he arrived on our doorstep was a few weeks after Cinco de Mayo, the day a cat belonging to our friends birthed a litter of kittens. We had spoken for two kittens from that litter, but because we’d adopted Bump in the interim, we only wanted one. We chose a black male and brought him home in July. We named him Lester.
Bump was about 2 or 3 years older than Lester and he immediately established the hierarchy. He would be king, boss, manager, head honcho, second-in-command and reporting only to Wesley.
Maine Coon cats, we discovered, like to have a master, and his was of course Wesley.
He followed Wesley like a puppy dog. As Wesley reclined on the couch every night watching TV, Bump was firmly settled on Wesley’s chest, purring. They were fast friends, partly because Wesley was first to let him drink from the kitchen faucet. Wesley was also Bump’s favorite sparring partner; Lester was far too skittish for fighting.
We’d only owned our home for a few months when we adopted these felines, so we were constantly hanging drapes, removing wallpaper or painting. Those home improvements projects required a ladder, which is where Bump reigned supreme. He lay with his body on the flat top, limbs dangling on either side, and swatted at Lester when he dared to climb up the rungs.
In the history of our ownership of this house, no human ever beat him up the attic steps. If he heard the attic door so much as crack, he was first on the steps, leading the way.
As we prepared a bedroom for the arrival of our first child, Bump decreed the crib as his, and Lester settled for the changing pad on the dresser. When we brought Lollie home from the hospital, Wesley put the car seat down, with Lollie in it, on the kitchen floor. He went back outside to unload our bags. I watched as the cats cautiously sniffed the car seat, at first mildly curious and quickly uninterested. When the something in the car seat fussed after a few moments, they were riveted and alarmed.
The cats slept at the feet of both our infants despite the protestations from many of my friends. As the two baby girls grew up, both cats established boundaries and guarded their personal space from the most frequent invader, Mary Fin. She was enamored with her kitties and barely gave them a moment’s peace.
Over the years, Bump became more tolerant of Mary Fin’s affections. He once let her cover him up in her bed and let her pretend he was her baby doll. I never saw her happier. She followed both cats through the house praising them with sweet baby talk the whole way.
While Lester is the sweeter, gentler soul who mostly just wants to get safely out of the way thank-you-very-much, Bump was front and center at every going on in this house. In family portraits, he posed in the front row.  He thought, rightly so, that he belonged here.
Ever the sportsman, this spring was especially profitable for Bump. So fruitful were his hunts that I seriously questioned whether the Easter bunny would visit our house with treats for Mary Fin and Lollie. Bump was doing more than his part to control the rabbit and bird population on our circle. Indeed, Bump brought many prizes to our back door, and Wesley lavished him with praise while I averted my eyes and tried desperately not to see the trophy.
As spring unfolded this year, our family evolved in a wonderful way. Mary Fin is 3 and Lollie is almost 7. They’re finally able to play really well together. They take turns driving the Barbie Jeep, serving meals at Getty’s Food House and playing baseball in the front yard. Every time we played outside in April and May, the cats lounged on the periphery. Bump was usually on his favorite perch: the roof of Wesley’s car. There, he silently thumped his tail and gave us slow blinks, lording over the neighborhood and otherwise living the life of Riley. I thought several times that it would not get much better than this. Here we were together: a mom, a dad, two girls and their cats. It was my American dream, certainly not perfect but breathtakingly beautiful.
Those days, still so close I can almost grasp them, were indeed the good old days.
One night two weeks ago, Bump stayed outside all night as he liked to do and as I occasionally allowed. When I opened the door early the next morning, he didn’t run as he always did. He walked very slowly. He didn’t eat much and he stayed in the breakfast room all day. The next morning Mary Fin tried to feed him by pretending his kibble was an airplane, the way all mothers entice their babies to eat. Wesley took him to the vet and brought him home later that day. After a week Bump was very sweet to us but he still wasn’t back to normal.
I took him back to the vet’s office, where chest x-rays revealed pneumonia. He didn’t respond to medicine and rest, and we didn’t want him to suffer. Wesley and I were allowed to pet and love on Bump as we said goodbye, but it ripped our hearts out nonetheless.
I left the vet’s office, finished work at school and went home to fall apart. As I pulled in, two dear friends were already in our driveway, and their hugs helped ease the heartache.
Our girls were spending the week in Missouri with family, and we were due to pick them up the next day. We met them in Memphis and afterward picked up Bump’s ashes from the precious employee at Mortimer’s who was willing to let me in on a Saturday.
It seems a little foolish to have a pet cremated, but I wasn’t comfortable with the other options, and as soon as I held the little tin in my hands a weight lifted. Our Bump was where he should be, back with his family.
It broke our hearts all over again to tell the girls. Lollie cried, and Mary Fin didn’t understand. She still asks for her Bumpy. Lester looked for Bump for days; he was lost lost without his boss.
We’re planning to have a ceremony to bury our cat and to let the girls say goodbye. It will be a special time to remember our dear friend — Bump-O, Bumpus, Tump, Bumpy.
We think it’s fitting for a co-patriarch as good as Bump.