Norm
(Born May 2007 – Died August 12, 2026)
Norm — short for “Normal,” because he was the only kitten in his litter without extra toes — lived almost twenty years like he meant every single one of them. We’re heartbroken he didn’t quite make it there.
I brought him home as a tiny thing who cried through his first night, refusing the little box bed I’d set up for him because my bed was too tall for him to reach. Then, in the dark, I heard claws on the sheets, saw a small head poke up over the edge, and watched him crawl over to curl up against me. He slept pressed against me like that for the rest of his life, whenever he could.
He was barely more than a kitten the first time he went missing — gone for a full day and a night before a faint meow finally gave him away, thirty feet up a tree two yards over. I climbed two fences to reach him, and when Norm saw me turn to go find a ladder, he simply jumped. He bounced off the grass, shook it off, and trotted over to me hungry but otherwise fine. It was an early preview of a cat who did things entirely on his own terms.
The Wild Years
His first year was spent in a rental house in Kingsgate, where he took his destructive streak seriously — shredding my roommate’s fake bamboo plant down to four bare nubs, and climbing the door trim so many times to greet me face-to-face that it cost me part of my security deposit.
By his second year, on Beacon Hill in Seattle, Norm had become a full city adventurer. He worked out a route across a neighbor’s roof to reach our second-story bedroom window, where he’d yell to be let in — and the moment he saw me start toward the stairs, he’d bolt around and be waiting at the front door before I could get there. He also found his own secret way *into* the house — under the porch, through a gap, into storage, and down to the basement in a house that seemed to be more gaps than walls.
In Bellevue, with a greenbelt and power lines out back, he’d disappear on adventures that sometimes lasted all night. Later, in a Kirkland condo near a wetland, I once watched him calmly tag along about twenty feet behind a parade of six raccoons, not stalking, just keeping them company, before peeling off at our front door like nothing had happened.
He never lost a fight he started. When a dog lunged at him once while he was out front, Norm didn’t run — he leapt into a tree and swiped at it until the owner backed off. Years later, when a woman’s two big Labs wandered through our cul-de-sac, Norm marched over and popped one right on the nose. Neither dog ever came back down our street again.
When he’d wander further from home, he’d sometimes end up following me on walks, many blocks out. He’d eventually fall behind and stop, and I’d figure that was that. But often, on the walk back, there he’d be again several blocks from home, just sitting there waiting and he’d fall in and lead the way the rest of the way back like he’d planned it that way all along.
A Yard of His Own
Everything changed when I bought my first home and he got his own backyard for the first time. He claimed it completely — sunbathing on the deck, climbing the big mossy apple tree out back, sprawled across its horizontal branches clawing lazily at the bark. When we built a pond and put goldfish in it, he’d patrol it for hours, tapping the water just to see them react, never once trying to catch one. Right up through his final days, he still made a point of walking out to check on his fish.
He hunted moles the old-fashioned way: lying motionless by a hole for hours at a time. He caught three over the years, each one laid proudly on the back porch like a trophy for me to find.
He also appointed himself official greeter of the front porch. Any delivery driver who came by got a personal welcome — he’d never run off, just sit there and supervise, and more than once our security camera caught him sniffing a food delivery the second it hit the ground like he’d ordered it himself. One time a FedEx driver dropped off a package and turned to leave, and Norm got up and followed her all the way to her van, until she gave in and stopped to give him scratches before she could go.
Getting a Family
In 2019, shortly before the pandemic, I met my wife Kristen and her two kids. Norm was skeptical at first; when Kristen came around, he’d wedge himself between us on the couch, making it very clear she was moving in on his territory. But over time he came around completely, and they became his family too. He’d spend afternoons stretched out on the couch with Alexa and Preston, and he was always trying to sneak into their rooms to climb into bed with them. The kids loved him right back.
Norm was also, without exaggeration, a bit of a celebrity among our friends. He showed up on social media constantly — enough that plenty of people who never even met him in person knew exactly who Norm was.
The Legend of a Food Thief
Norm was, without question, a professional con artist at parties. He talked people out of food, stole straight off plates when talking didn’t work, and once lifted an entire breadstick off a table in front of a full room of witnesses. His masterpiece came the night my friend brought over three steaks — we ate two and passed out, and by morning, the third had vanished. We both thought the other had eaten it, but two days later, a greasy spot behind the couch, and a dramatic trip to the litter box, confirmed the truth: Norm ate the entire steak overnight, and lived with zero regrets about it. He never once turned down curly fries, pasta with marinara, or pretty much any human food offered or unguarded.
The Night He Fought a Coyote
About four years before the end, our neighborhood had a coyote problem. It had been caught on security cameras more than once, and a few neighbors had already reported cats missing. One night, we heard a fight break out in the street. A neighbor said they saw a coyote chasing a cat down the block. Not long after, Norm came limping home.
He had four canine puncture wounds in the back of his neck. His ear was split clean down the side of his head. Nearly every claw had been torn out, and he left a trail of bloody paw prints up the stairs behind him. He had gone toe to toe with a coyote and he won. He came home.
It took weeks for him to recover. He wore a cone for two weeks straight and needed so many baths to keep the wounds clean that, for the first and only time in his life, he seemed to actually enjoy them; he’d always cried through baths before that.
In the days after, we talked to the neighbors. One of them mentioned his own cat had gone missing that same week, and told us, almost reassuringly, that his cat was just as big and tough as Norm. I remember thinking (and I kept this to myself at the time) well, apparently not. It’s a strange, uncomfortable thought to have about a neighbor’s missing pet, but it’s the truth of what went through my head, and it’s part of what makes what Norm did that night feel so unbelievable. He fought off a wild predator and walked home. Not every cat on our street was that lucky.
He was never quite the same after that night. He stayed closer to home, mostly on the porch or in the backyard, and stopped going out looking for trouble the way he used to. But he’d earned that quiet.
His Last Season
In his prime, Norm was twenty solid pounds of muscle, built like something you’d see flexing in a nature documentary. Over his last year, that began to slip away no matter what I tried. A vet visit six months before the end found early liver and kidney trouble; he was down to thirteen pounds. His appetite faded slowly, meal by meal, until he was only interested in licking the gravy.
For his final three weeks, he moved permanently onto our bed — the one he loved most but wasn’t always allowed to hog, because he’d try to take it over completely. This time, no one minded. Even too weak to walk well, he still made the trip across the house to the litter box every time, and never once missed. We carried him to sip water and hand-fed him treats when he’d take them. Every night, Kristen and I cuddled him, and the kids, Alexa and Preston, came in to sit with him too.
Near the very end, we carried him out to the backyard one last time — his kingdom — where he sat in the sun and looked out over everything quietly, almost like he was saying goodbye to it.
Norm passed peacefully at 6:45 PM on August 12, 2026, held closely in my arms and Kristen’s.
He is buried beneath the apple tree he loved to climb — now, and always, known as Norm’s Tree.
He was a very good boy.
— Brian