Tabs

There’s nothing like a little morning meditation to clear the kitty cobwebs and focus your powers of feline fabulousness on kitty modeling domination.

Tabs wanted to go for his walk at the crack of dawn this morning before the neighborhood hustles and bustles so that he could channel his chi and practice his kitty yoga poses…

His favorite time to walk is early, early, early in the morning, sometimes even before dawn when it’s still a little dark, because it’s quieter and sometimes there are still interesting varmints like raccoons skulking about.

Today it was already light, but it was still early and quiet.

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Tabs loves ? the ladies…

And the ladybugs. ?

They’re all over the place right now because we got some from a lawn and garden store to go to town on the aphids in the official Tabs the Cat Industries LLC employee deck garden, and they’re doing a GREAT job, but Tabs doesn’t exactly know what to think of them…

He gets up really close to check ’em out, and then watches them do their work, but he leaves them be. He mostly just watches…

Even when he has lunch at the corporate salad bar, he nibbles the grass all around where the ladybugs are, but he lets them have their space.

I think it’s because he can tell that they’re industrious, and he has mad respect for hard work. 🙂

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As Tabs climbs the stairs a little slower and slower every day in his senior years, I catch myself thinking about his life and hoping that he’s had a happy life, even though we moved him away from his kittenhood home in Mill Valley, where he lived outdoors and slept beneath the stars.

I know he’d love nothing more than to spend every waking hour outside.

I wish I could read his little kitty brain and ask him, “Tabs, are you happy?”

I know he’s always loved going for walks, and he’s a good leash cat, but it’s not the same as when he lived full-time outside.

Just to give him his own little slice of outdoor heaven, I’ve tried to turn our back deck into a tabby paradise, and I think he enjoys it…

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After winning his gold medal in the butt showing competition this week in Rio, Tabs returned home to a hero’s welcome.

The president of his official fan club, a Ms. Connor Claire, organized the celebratory festivities, and all she asked for in return was an autograph, which Tabs was kind enough to provide.

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“Mrowww!” — which translates to “Victoryyy!” That’s what Tabs hopes to shout this week after he competes in his Summer Cat Olympic events in Rio.

Yes, as I’m sure comes as a surprise to absolutely no one at all who’s reading this… 🙂 Tabs is a favorite to win gold for Team U.S.A. in a number of events…

Like butt showing, which he’s been practicing for his entire life.

He’s also expected to win at least one silver medal. He came in second to world champion French fence sitter Jacques Durand in the prelims, but you know what they say about the Cat Olympics. Anything can happen.

His other best chance to take home the gold is in the bacon hiding competition, which he’s really only been practicing for a few months. His training started one morning when I gave him a small piece of bacon after breakfast, and he picked it up out of his food bowl and ran away with it to hide it somewhere in the house!

I never found it…

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The first thing Tabs always does when he goes outside to inspect the garden on the deck is walk straight up to either the one zucchini squash plant or one of the tomato plants and take a big chomp out of the biggest leaf.

Maybe it’s how he samples the merchandise, and every time I say, “No, Tabs!” I think he takes it as a polite suggestion, like he’ll take it under advisement.

He loves gardening, but mostly in a supervisory capacity. Most of the time he doesn’t actually like to get his paws dirty.

He also likes to rub his cheeks against the corners of the pots and planters after inspecting them. It’s his official stamp of quality control approval. “Inspected by Tabs.” And he also has to do his weekly 360-degree inspection of every square inch of the entire garden, where he checks behind the plants, in between them and even on top of the planters. It’s something to see a 20-pound tabby squeezing into a potted plant.

Next year his plans are to create a larger container area strictly planted with cat grass, sort of like a portable lawn that he can stretch out on without his girth hanging over the sides. It will be an engineering marvel akin to one of the Seven Wonders of the World. Tabs is doing the landscape design, but the project lead will be El Hub. 🙂

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Tabs has a wanderer’s heart. Whenever we’re on our walks together on the hill behind our house, he always wants us to go south. He gently tugs on his leash as if to say, “Let’s go that way,” and stares off in the distance toward the town of Mill Valley, which is where we used to live before we moved here.

I don’t know if it’s just my imagination, but whenever I let him lead us, he always wants us to go the same way: south.

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We really don’t know how old Tabs is.

Our best guess is that he’s about 11, or 10.

Our vet thinks that’s about right, but we don’t really know. He looked like he was near the end of his kittenhood when he first came into our life as a stray, and that was around 2007.

He was a kitty model right from the start, as you can tell. He took to the camera right away.

2008

He also lavished me with lurvies from the start. He’s always loved hanging out.

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