Last Saturday night, at the tires of a truck driving too fast, we lost a friend and hero: our neighbor’s tuxedo cat, Rainbow Houseboat.
That’s one hard-to-live-up-to name—given by the neighbor’s children—but not only was the name lived up to, it was mythologized as legend.
One evening, I watched her stalk a herd of eight deer down the greenbelt. At ten yards out, still unmarked by the pack, she bolted at the biggest doe. The deer was wholly unsurprised; this had obviously happened before, and she quickly chased Rainbow up a tree. But Rainbow came back for more, undaunted, and pushed the whole herd across the creek. Another afternoon, I watched her sprint into a game of heads-up chicken with a woodchuck at full speed. She won, with the twice-her-size woodchuck swerving down the creek’s bank at the last second. Really, I could go on and on.
About a year after we moved to Asheville, when faced with a fork in the road, I noticed myself asking, “What would Rainbow do here?” For real. Judge me how you will, but that cat had the intangibles. And it wasn’t fearlessness—this was no sociopath cat—it was relentless action despite fear. She was also the motivation to get a cat of our own, and after we had, the two became fast friends. My wife and I would return home from dinner to find Rainbow on the ground beneath our three-legged cat’s favorite window, keeping her company.
I, for one, will miss her presence in my days. We, speaking for the block, will miss her inspirational spirit and will hope to make her proud. Rest in peace Rainbow Houseboat.
To livin’ a life we love,
Ryan Fightmaster, MD
