“To most people, Hans Huberman was barely visible. An un-special person…. He was always just there. Not noticeable. Not important or particularly valuable.” In the novel The Book Thief, Hans Huberman is the foster father of the main character, Liesel, and he’s not only my favorite character, but he’s also Liesel’s favorite person. The narrator explains how, to most people, he wouldn’t really stand out, yet to Liesel, his “thereness,” as the narrator puts it, is one of the key qualities she treasures in him: “The girl knew from the outset that Hans Huberman would always appear” when she needed him, “and he would not leave.”

Matthew and I adopted Skittles, along with his father Linus, from a woman whose young son had developed sudden and severe allergies. Skittles was ten at the time, and we’ve never felt right about renaming older cats. We made a slight exception with him, though, in that his given name was Skittle, singular, and between our familiarity with the candy (which always seems to be referred to in the plural) and the fact that Matthew used to have a cat named Skittles, we unconsciously kept adding an “s,” so Skittles he became. As we got to know him better, however, we didn’t so often add the “s” as drop the “tle,” generally calling him “Skit” or “Skit Kit.”

We’d been warned before adopting Skit that he was shy and might spend most of his time under our bed, so we considered it a credit to our cat-whisperer skills that he was more often on the bed than under it, and if he was under it, he’d come out to greet us when we came in the room. What we didn’t know was that, comfortable as Skit seemed in the bedroom, he’d rarely leave it in the over two years he lived with us. To our relief, he learned to go to the basement for the litterbox, and we’d occasionally spot him on the main or lower level of the house, but most of the time, he stayed upstairs, usually in the bedroom. He was always just there.

Though warned of Skit’s shyness, we weren’t told until we met him that he was somewhat crippled from a kittenhood injury. Between this and his age, he wasn’t exactly agile, but since he didn’t seem to be in discomfort, and he could still climb stairs and jump up onto the bed, we found his gimpy gait to be part of his cuteness. We realized, nonetheless, that most people probably wouldn’t regard him as too special. He’d never win any beauty competitions or become a Cover Cat. “He’s a lover, not a looker,” we’d say. Despite his generally weighing about ten pounds, normal for an adult cat, he always looked scrawny, and although we’d scritch his head all the time, we hesitated to pet his back, because it was a bit disturbing to feel his spine. He also had an odd tail, unusually wide at the base, but then, about halfway down its length, narrowing abruptly and ending in a pointed tip. His claws wouldn’t retract all the way, clicking on our hardwood floors, and the “thumb” claw was freakishly large and thick and needed to be clipped to keep it from growing back into his paw.

During his time with us, Skit actually became even less physically attractive. He grew a large bulge on one of his shoulders; the vet diagnosed it as a lipoma, a fatty tumor that was unsightly but benign, so we decided not to traumatize Skit by having it removed. Before that, we did have the vet remove a cyst on his upper lip, leading to a couple weeks of his having to wear the “Cone of Shame.” Even after he was no longer our Cone Kitty, his face still wasn’t the loveliest, as he’d scratch his chin until it was raw or even bleeding. The vet suggested that it might be a contact allergy, so we changed blankets, which appeared to help.

We got Skit in the late spring, and he stayed on the bed much of the time for those first few months, but when the temperatures dropped, he’d hunker by the register, as if trying to absorb all the heat he could. With the return of warmer weather, he returned to the bed; however, after his second winter with us, he stayed by the register even as spring and summer came. Wanting to encourage him to get back on the bed, I suggested taking away the blanket we’d put on the floor, thinking that he’d seek a softer spot … yet after a few days of his continuing to hunker on the hardwood floor, we felt bad for his aging bones and gave him the blanket once again. For about a year, we could pretty much count on his being cutely curled up on that blanket whenever we entered the room. He was always just there.

Or nearly always, at any rate. Grateful not to have to keep a litterbox upstairs, we did decide to humor Skit by bringing up a plate of canned cat food every day and by providing an upstairs bowl of water in the hall; we didn’t want to risk his dying of hunger or thirst. So Skit would regularly leave his blanket for food and water. He’d also leave it almost every night in what became an endearing ritual. He liked me but was especially fond of Matthew, and almost every night after we turned out the lights, we’d hear his clicking claws crossing the floor in a lurching, lub-dub, heartbeat rhythm, uneven because of his bad leg. Getting to the bed, he’d jump up on Matthew’s side and settle on his chest while we scritched his head and stroked his sides. These goodnight snuggles were important enough to Skit that when we were sleeping in the downstairs guest room, where it’s cooler and darker, he’d often venture out of his safe space to find us. Sometimes he’d come down to that room to see me even when Matthew wasn’t with me.

After about two and a half years of being blessed by Skit’s thereness, of feeling that he would always appear when we needed him and wouldn’t leave, we did the leaving ourselves by going out of town for a weekend. Notwithstanding Skit’s multiple minor maladies, he’d never shown signs of any major illness, and all our other cats seemed fine too, including the eighteen-year-old, so we didn’t have any concerns about leaving them for a couple days. Still, we arranged for a cat-sitter to look in on them, and before we left, I found all five so I could give them a farewell petting and tell them I loved them.

I do this every time we go out of town, and every time we return, we start by looking for each of the cats, to make sure they’re all okay. We assumed they would be this time, too, but as I came into the bedroom, Skit wasn’t there on his blanket. This wouldn’t have alarmed me automatically except for what was on his blanket: he’d had diarrhea, something that had never happened before. Thinking he might be hiding under the bed, I lifted the covers and peered under the edge, but he wasn’t there. Just then, Matthew came upstairs and said, “I found Skit … in the basement by the litterbox…. He’s dead.” Everything had been fine when the cat-sitter had visited the day before.

The abruptness of Skit’s demise made it in some ways less emotionally grueling that when we’d lost cats in the past. We didn’t have to watch him suffer, realize he probably wouldn’t recover, make the awful appointment, and return home with an empty cat carrier. But I’m still not used to the fact that when we come to the bedroom and glance toward the wall by the heater, he’s no longer there.

“Click, click…click, click…click, click.”

You always knew when Skittles, our sweet gimpy tiger kitty, entered a room. His back claws were long and a few of them could not retract all the way, and so he clicked wherever he walked. In addition to the sound, he walked with a staccato rhythm as well; it seems as a kitten he had an accident where he got hung up trying to jump over a baby gate, and it messed up his haunches to where he had a distinctive duck waddle for his back legs. Two quick clicks – “click, click” and a pause, followed by two more clicks as he waded through his daily life.

Skittles was quite a cat. His back-leg injury left his back half pulled-looking, so that although he was a normal weight (about nine pounds), his back half collapsed down to a narrow bony body that was difficult to pet since you could feel every bone in his spine. He had some hair missing around his lips and sometimes his chin, and his physical features in general were somewhat homely when considered individually. But, when you threw in his amazingly sweet temperament, all of his ugly-duckling features combined together in a magical way, making him adorably cute.

By nature shy, Skittles was, I think, reclusive because of his limited mobility. When we brought Skittles home with his father Linus back in May of 2017, we put them in our bedroom to begin the week-long socialization process with our existing kitties. While Linus went on to boldly roam the entire house, Skittles rarely left the safety of his bedroom. He would leave to use the littler box and to eat, but when he did, he added a low growl to his “click, click,” to alert the other cats that he was on the move.

And move he could, especially given his back legs. On the rare occasions I caught Skittles outside the bedroom, he would sprint back to his safe spot at a surprisingly quick pace. Skittles was also able to spring up on the bed, despite his legs. He spent much of his first year hunkered down on our bed.

Until it got cold. Then, Skittles discovered the wonder of the forced-air vent, and he loved that it spit out warm air. He would bundle his bony body beside the register, and would stay there for hours without moving. I felt bad for him sitting on the floor, so I gave him a blanket to sit on, one that he would turn out to be allergic to, causing him to lose his chin hair for months. I eventually figured it out and got him another blanket.

Meredith and I figured that when winter ended, Skittles would jump back on the bed again, but he never really did. He stayed by his trusty vent all through the summer – maybe he liked the air conditioning, or maybe it was his safe spot. Either way, we kept a blanket down for him all the time.

There was one time when Skittles would leave his favorite spot – bedtime. When I climbed into bed, Skittles would click his way over, jump up on the bed, and proceed to sit on my chest while I scratched his ears. He sometimes would settle down in my chest, often with his front claws on my throat, which would cause me to haul the blanket (and Skittles) down the bed and away from my larynx. He would stay as long I I kept petting him. When I stopped, he would either jump down, or go to the foot of the bed for a few minutes before going to get a drink.

How that cat loved water. We kept a bowl of water outside the bedroom for him so that he could get a drink without having to navigate stairs. When I would put fresh water in the dish, he would leave the heat to come get a drink, usually just as I was putting the bowl back down again. He would drink for a long time, and for some reason it was part if his nightly routine as well, after he jumped off the bed.

One of the most amazing things about Skittles is how much he loved me. Mer and I sleep in the downstairs guest bedroom on weekends because the room is darker than our bedroom, making it easier to sleep in. When I would go to bed, about three-quarters of the time, I would get settled and hear “click, click” coming down the stairs. The kitty who loved his heating register and who rarely left the bedroom somehow knew I was in bed, and he was coming down the stairs to get his bedtime loving. It was adorably sweet of him. He even did it once to my brother, Shannon, when Shannon was visiting one weekend; this from the cat who ran from everyone.

This last Labor Day weekend, Meredith and I went to visit a friend in Michigan, leaving on Saturday and returning on Monday. When we left on Saturday, all was well, and there was no indication that Skittles could be ill – he was lying on his trusty blanket as always, and had come up on the bed Friday night for bedtime love. When we got home Monday afternoon, Skittles was not under the bed or on his blanket, which was unusual, but probably meant he was in the basement using a litter box. The only indication of concern was there was some diarrhea next to his blanket. I went looking for him, and I found him lying dead next to a litter box. My guess is he must have had something sudden happen, like a heart attack, and he lost control of his bowels, but he still tried to get to his litter box. What a sweet kitty. He had passed away just one year after his father, Linus, had died, and only around twelve years old.

It is hard now to not see a blanket on the bedroom floor, or to hear “click, click” on the stairs, and when I go to bed, I really miss my sweet tiger kitty. He was an improbable mess of a cat – homely and cute, terrified and friendly, slow and quick, settled and roaming, and he clicked his claws all the way into my heart.