It’s past midnight, September 10th, 2012, and the streets of Portland are deserted. A cold mist bathes the city and Michael King’s ragged, wet clothes stick to his skin. He doesn’t mind. Living on the streets he’s used to feeling grimy. And after a record dry spell, the rain feels good. He pops open a can of Four Loko and dumps it into a half-drunk bottle of malt liquor, which he calls a Sidewalk Slam. He sloshes the mixture around and takes a deep swig.

Michael passes the bottle to Josh Stinson, a 27-year-old clad in a frayed blue shirt and jeans held together by a safety pin at the waist. The rain has invaded his dark tangle of strawberry-blond dreadlocks. Stinson takes a slug of Michael’s concoction. It tastes like punch spiked with gasoline. 

“Good, right?” Michael says. 

“That’s lethal,” Stinson says, cringing and handing it back. “Did you siphon it from someone’s car?”

Michael downs the rest. At 47, he looks old and worn. His vivid blue eyes are shadowed with dark bags and his sharp cheekbones sunken and heavily lined after years of hard drinking. Ten years ago, he was a chef in St. Louis and had a nice apartment. Now he has less than five dollars in his pocket.  

They shuffle down Hawthorne, a boulevard lined with homeless encampments. The Sidewalk Slam lends them a small dose of warmth. 

They slow in front of the Tabor Hill Cafe, a dingy old-time diner that’s closed for the night. A stab of hunger breaks through Michael’s intoxicated haze. The pictures of eggs, waffles and fries plastered on the windows make his mouth water. A flash of white under one of the café’s outdoor picnic tables catches Michael’s eye. He has a knack for finding unlikely treasures. Coins, broken jewelry, half-eaten sandwiches. The other drifters call him Groundscore. Stooping, he peers into the shadows. 

“What’re you looking for?” Stinson asks, kneeling beside him.

Michael and Stinson take the cat back to their squat behind the UPS store on Hawthorne. During the day, it’s a loading bay with trucks streaming in and out. They have to wake up before business hours, stash their sleeping bags in the bushes, and stay away till the shop closes. But at night, it’s home—quiet and isolated, shaded by a sheltering red maple.

“Welcome to slum palace,” Michael tells the cat, setting her down on a dry patch under the doorway. He expects her to bolt but she stays close and sniffs around, waiting patiently as he sets up camp. Whatever, Michael thinks, she’ll be gone by sunrise. 

But in the morning something rough wipes across his cheek. He opens his eyes to see the cat licking his face. Not yet alert, he cracks a smile, pulls an arm out of his sleeping bag and rubs behind her ear. She looks at him with her puffy eye and meows. She’s clearly hungry, but he doesn’t have any food. 

“You should go find someone else to take care of you,” he says, getting up. 

He nudges Stinson awake. Time to trudge into the city to scavenge and “fly the sign,” their bit of battered cardboard that says ‘Share Some Kindness.’ The cat watches them as they leave. Michael looks at her over his shoulder expecting that it will be the last time they see the animal, but when they get back at the end of the day, she’s still standing watch, her tail flicking impatiently. 

“Look at that,” Stinson says, smiling. He feeds her a piece of a cheese sandwich he found on the street and the cat devours it in twitchy, panicked bites.

Later, Stinson and Michael silently smoke their roll-ups and share a 32-ounce water bottle filled with what Michael calls “a wakeup”—a mix of any available alcohol. While they drink, the cat bats around a scrunched-up cigarette pack, leaping and zooming around. Michael can’t help but laugh as the cat vaults into the air and whacks the packet. 

“She’s funny,” Michael says. 

“Maybe we should keep her,” Stinson suggests. 

“That’s a bad idea,” Michael says, trusting reason over emotion. Any money they scrounge together goes to booze; he’s not about to buy cat food with it. He scrunches into his sleeping bag and tries not to focus on the hardness of the ground. All he wants to do is fall asleep, but the cat creeps up once he’s settled and sniffs around him. 

“What do you want?” She comes closer and sits in front of his face, her tail twitching. “I don’t have anything.” 

“I think she wants in your bag.” 

Michael closes his eyes for a while but sleep doesn’t come and his buzz wears off. When he opens his eyes, she’s still there, staring down at him. “OK, kitty,” he says, lifting the flap. “You can sleep with me tonight.” 

The cat crawls in and snuggles up by his chest. In a minute, she’s asleep and purring; a hypnotizing personal heater. Michael looks over at Stinson, who shrugs. “She likes you,” he says. 

By October, it’s clear that the cat has no intention of leaving Michael. Every day when he returns to the squat she’s there waiting. She rubs against his leg and meows until he bends down and picks her up.

“Damn it,” he grumbles to Stinson, in spite of his happiness at seeing her, “this cat’s sticking around.” 

Stinson has been feeding her scraps of whatever he can find behind the food trucks. She’s already looking healthier. Her puffy eye is healing and it’s clear that she’s a beauty, no more than two or three years old, with tiger-striped patches and soulful eyes the color of eucalyptus leaves. Michael takes to calling her Tabor after the cafe where they found her. 

Tabor starts sniffing for treats as soon as they come back from panhandling. She rubs against their legs, meows, and stares up at them with anticipation. 

“She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” Michael says one day, as if seeing her for the first time. 

On the sidewalk outside the New Seasons supermarket, they see a friend, a skinny, shaggy-haired 19-year-old drifter named Kyle who sometimes shares the UPS squat and has lived on and off the streets since he was 14. He squints and says, “Wow, you got a cat. Didn’t know you wanted a cat.”

“I didn’t,” Michael shrugs. 

“You think she has an owner?” 

“She’ll go back to where she came from eventually. I’m not stopping her.” 

“Maybe we should look,” Stinson says. 

“Yeah,” Michael says, as if he’s remembering something. “Guess we should.” Michael and Stinson begin scanning the Lost Cat posters as they wander around town. 

 “I just don’t get it,” Michael says, glancing at the cat on his shoulder, blinking drowsily, annoyed that they didn’t see a single poster for her. 

Eventually, Stinson snaps a few pictures of Tabor and posts them on Craigslist. After weeks of effort and no sign of an owner, he turns to Michael and says, “Well, Groundscore, looks like she’s yours.” 

You can’t own a cat, Michael thinks, especially when you don’t own anything else. But he smiles anyway. 

One morning during a cold snap, Michael wakes up to find frost covering his bag. Tabor had climbed inside his sweatshirt to absorb as much warmth as possible. Almost time to head south, he thinks.

On December 3, celebrating his 48th birthday with his pals at the Lone Fir cemetery, Michael takes a swig of Wild Turkey. It’s one of those wet, bone-chilling nights, and the whiskey can do only so much. As he passes the bottle, he announces, “Tabor and I are going to California.” 

“That’s a pretty long hitch,” says Crazy Joe, a whippet-thin guy in his late 40s with a messy mop of dirty-blond hair. “How you plan on travelin’ with a cat? First class or coach?’” 

Everyone except Stinson laughs. 

Michael knows it’s mad to travel with an animal. It adds weight to an already heavy pack. He just wants to survive the winter and the cat is only going to make that harder. 

But he can’t leave her. 

“It’s a compulsion of the heart,” he tells Stinson later that night. “I wanna show her the sights.” 

The first time Michael ran away, in June 1978, he was 13 years old. He packed a little duffel bag and snuck out in the night with his twin brother, John Patrick, or JP as he was called. They walked all the way down the railway tracks out of St. Louis. They got as far as New Mexico before being hauled back home in handcuffs. Two years later, his dad caught him smoking weed in the backyard, flew into a rage, and checked him into rehab. He escaped and hitchhiked out of town. His dad put out a missing person report. After Michael kept running away, his parents didn’t want him back.

In 1981, at 16, Michael wound up in Montana. With its sawtooth mountains and sun-seared plains, it was the wild, uncultivated place he’d been looking for. “All you can see is a little landscape and a lot of sky, and not a soul for miles,” he wrote on a postcard to JP back home. He got a job delivering milk in Helena, found a room in a cheap guesthouse, and forged his dad’s signature on the enrollment form at the local high school.

Eventually, an administrator demanded to meet his parents. Michael, thinking quickly, went looking for a dad. In St. Louis, he had met adults through the Alcoholics Anonymous program his father sent him to. Michael didn’t like rehab but was impressed by the kindness of the people he met in AA. He figured that it was as good a place as any to find a guardian, so he went to a meeting in Helena and surveyed the adults sitting around him in the circle.  

One man caught his eye—Walter Ebert, a divorced Vietnam vet and recovering alcoholic with a gruff personality. What struck Michael was when Walter started talking about cats and dogs. He lived alone with a houseful of strays he’d rescued. Taking care of the animals, he said, helped him stay sober. 

After the meeting, Michael asked if Walter would pretend to be his dad so he could stay in school, explaining that he’d run away from a bad home but had a job and could take care of himself. He just needed a signature. “Sure, I’ll help you,” Walter said, but insisted on speaking to his mother first. Over the phone, Michael’s mother told him that if her son wanted to live in Montana, that was fine by her. His parents signed him away. 

Nine years later, Michael trudges down the side of Interstate 5 through a snowstorm. He scavenged a pet carrier and strapped it to the top of his backpack; Tabor huddles inside under a fleece. He walks for hours with his hand shoved above his head into Tabor’s blankets, trying to pass some warmth between them. The trucks blast past; snow piles up on the pack and on Michael’s clothes.

The patchwork of suburban neighborhoods south of Portland gradually turns into rolling, forested hills. After seven hours with no ride, Michael stops, his stomach churning and his fingers numb. Tabor has gone silent. They need shelter or they won’t make it through the night. He puts the backpack down and shields his eyes from the snow. Looking through the jumble of snow-dusted pines, he sees a derelict barn. Michael stomps through the snow and pushes the rotting door open. 

Inside, the barn is dusty with straw and seed husks, but it’s dry. Slumping down on a pile of decomposing old horse blankets, Michael builds a fire and warms his numb fingers. He prepares two dishes: a grilled-cheese sandwich for himself and a bowl of Meow Mix and warmed-up milk. Once he’d been a chef at fancy restaurants, and now he’s cooking for a cat in a falling-down barn in a blizzard. Then again, he thinks, it’s nice to have someone special to cook for again. 

As the fire burns down, Michael slides into the sleeping bag and dozes. 

Michael and Tabor are back on the road before dawn and, though it’s bitingly cold, their luck improves. They get a couple rides in quick succession and make it about 200 miles to Sisters, Oregon, a picturesque town that looks like it hasn’t changed much since the 1800s—there’s a main street with covered walkways and bars with names like Bronco Billy’s and Three Creeks Brewing. Michael settles outside a general store, panhandling. It’s almost Christmas and people are generous. He gathers tons of cat food and over a hundred dollars. Normally, he’d blow it all on booze, but tonight he restrains himself to a half pint of whiskey. For once, he's going to treat Tabor to a proper bed. 

Through snow flurries, he spots a rundown hodey, what drifters call a motel. He hustles inside and pays for three nights in an orange-carpeted room. There’s a ratty floral bedspread and patches of mildew in the bathroom, but to Michael it feels like the Ritz. He turns the TV on, slides into bed and flips through channels. The movie Babe comes on and Tabor perks up. She watches the talking animals and then leaps towards the TV. Michael laughs as she bats at the screen, trying to figure out how to get at the pig.

He gets a pizza from the vending machine and a tin of tuna for Tabor. They eat in bed and then Tabor makes a nest under the sheets, snuggling against Michael. As they lay together in the blankets, snow fills the street outside and the neon sign casts a warm glow across the frosted windows. Michael stares at the red reflection, thinking it’s one of the nicest Christmases he’s had in years. 

Back in Portland, Ron Buss decides to conduct a séance to figure out where Mata Hairi has gone. He calls an animal psychic named Rachel recommended to him by a cat-loving neighbor.

 “I’d like you to light a candle,” the psychic says in a soothing voice. “It will strengthen the psychic bond with Mata.”

 In a moment, he lights several tealight candles, and soon every space and surface is glowing. “OK, it’s lit,” he says.

Rachel gasps. “There’s a person, like a rock that was fractured in many places and glued back together, but the fractures still show,” she says. “This person has her.” 

Ron assumes she’s talking about his neighbor Jack, a hulking, muscular biker in his mid-20s. He has more concrete reasons to suspect Jack. A year earlier, Mata disappeared for several months. Ron searched frantically for three days until Jack told him: “If Mata’s still alive, she’s probably somewhere in a forest in Washington State.” He claimed that she stowed away in his trunk. When he got to Vancouver, he popped the trunk and she shot out into the woods. Ron was furious. Why didn’t Jack tell him immediately? He became convinced that Jack murdered Mata and constructed an elaborate cover story, until he got a call from the Vancouver Humane Society letting him know that they had found Mata. He brought her home but still doubted whether the catnapping was an accident. 

That evening, Ron’s best friend, Evan, a slight guy with short coppery-brown hair, a pale Irish-mist complexion and arms inked with butterfly tattoos, came over to get Ron out of the house. Across the street, Jack and his biker buddies were partying in Jack’s front yard, screaming along to Guns ’N’ Roses for Ron’s benefit: “Bitching, fussing, cussing. I used to love her, but I had to kill. Oooh, yeah, but I had to kill her…” 

“Lemme in before I get accosted by Tony the gorilla out here,” Evan shouts through the porch screen door. “Gawd, it’s like the house from The Exorcist,” he says, standing in the doorway, surveying the living room glowing with candles. “What is this… some spiritual shit?” 

“It’s for Mata,” Ron replies, “to guide her home.” 

Evan flops down on the sofa beside Ron. Creto, a lovely leggy tuxedo tom with a crooked mustache, pokes his head round from behind a chair. He had become clingy since his littermate disappeared. 

“I miss her so much. Creto sits on the porch at night waiting for Mata. During the day he creeps around the house like a nervous wreck. Seems like the only thing that makes him happy anymore is mint ice cream.” 

“Well, burning candles isn’t gonna bring her back. Wouldn’t it be more sensible to go across the road and set that miserable bastard’s house on fire. Preferably with him in it.” 

“I need to find a cat whisperer,” Ron says, distracted, “someone who can communicate with animals.” 

“I know you miss her, but this is not healthy. You’re obsessed.” 

“Obsessed? I’m devastated,” Ron says, in tears, “I’ve had Creto and Mata since they fit into the palm of my hand. I found them, half-dead, mewling weakly, their eyes almost glued shut… tossed out like garbage. I cared for them around the clock… brought them back to life.” 

A few days after the séance, Ron is doing a little gardening with Creto by his side. He spots Jack walking toward him in a red T-shirt with LOTTO, GUNS, AMMO, BEER in big letters across the front. Ron flushes with adrenaline. His fingers are muddy from digging and he’s still holding a mug of coffee. “I know you killed her,” he shouts, stepping in front of Jack and blocking his path. 

Jack hesitates, confused. He has no idea what Ron is talking about. Though Ron doesn’t believe in violence, he shoves him. Jack pushes him back, easily knocking him to the ground. 

Jack looms over him. “I didn’t touch your fucking cat. I’m not an animal abuser.” 

Ron staggers to his feet, grabs the coffee mug and flings it at Jack, hitting him in the head. “You’re a black-hearted beast. I know you did something to Mata.” 

Jack touches his face, furious. “If you run around telling people I killed your cat, you will disappear. I’ll take you out, and no one’ll ever find you. You understand, you fat fishwife?” 

Ron limps back to his house, convinced more than ever that Jack has murdered Mata. 

The towns roll by as Michael and Tabor head south: Redding, Willows, Watsonville. They pass rice paddies, walnut orchards and grassy pastures with cows and horses. Sometimes they hitchhike or ride a bus. Sometimes they just walk.

Catching a lucky ride in an RV near Big Sur, Michael rolls down the window and feels the sea breeze on his face. 

Beneath a hazy purple sky, the RV swerves along the twists and turns of Highway 1, frighteningly close to the cliff, the fierce, foamy water of the Pacific swirling below. 

“Look, Tabor. . . it’s the ocean,” Michael said, holding the cat up to the window. “That’s where we’re going.” 

Sprawled across his lap, Tabor watches everything, owl-like, purring at the excitement of it all: the low-flying clouds scudding past, the puff plants waving in the breeze and the cars whooshing by. 

In a quiet cove beneath a bushy acacia, Michael wastes no time building their little squat by the sea, with driftwood, a mishmash of splintered branches and plastic flotsam. It looks like a hut cobbled together by a castaway.

Tabor seems to love her new turf, stalking tiny lizards and crabs. One day, Michael trails her into the beach parking lot, as she slips inside an opened camper van. It takes him a few minutes to walk over to peer inside. A couple of surfers in denim cut-offs appear through a fog of marijuana smoke.

“I think my cat jumped in here,” Michael says cautiously.

A good-looking guy, with cheekbones like cliffs and scruffy sun-streaked hair, looks up. “Think you’re right,” he replies, smiling at the cat behind him. Tabor is stretched out, belly up, on a discarded sweatshirt. “Wanna come in? Think she’s too stoned to move.” 

“I hope not,” Michael says as he steps inside the blue haze and picks up his errant cat. 

“This cat’s the real deal,” the other surfer says, puffing on his joint. “She came in here, climbed on my chest, and started licking my eyeball. I’m like, ‘Oh, my God, cat, we’re not lovers. I’m just chilling with you, dude.’” 

Later, sitting back against the tree with Tabor asleep in his lap, Michael is guzzling beer and reading Bukowski’s Hollywood. Gazing towards the sea as the sun dips below the horizon and listening to Tabor’s purring, he feels something close to happiness. This little stray brought a swish of mystery and magic into his life. 

His phone buzzes on the sand, but he ignores it. He listens to Walter’s gruff voice on speakerphone: “Christ almighty, why don’t you pick up? What’ve you lost the use of your hands? I wish I could sit under a tree doing nothing, with my personal banker on speed dial.” 

Michael laughs. “How’d he know I’m under a tree?” 

In mid-May, Stinson, Michael’s old pal from Portland, shows up talking about a road trip to Yosemite. He’s brought his new girlfriend with him, a dark-haired pixie of a girl named Madison. Michael likes Madison. She has a lot of great characteristics, like owning a car. But there’s a catch: she has a caramel-brown pit-bull mix named Bobby.

After a day hanging out on the beach, trading road stories, Michael notices Tabor gets along with Bobby, and so he accepts Stinson’s invitation. He stops by Linda’s and tells her he’s leaving. He gives her an address in Portland she can write to. She asks to hold Tabor one last time. “Take care of each other,” she says. 

They reach Yosemite just before dark. It’s been a mild winter, the weather is good, and the state park is filled with campers. They find a quiet spot and build a fire. As Tabor and Bobby chase each other through the trees, Michael rests against a trunk, drinking whiskey and doing a crossword. He’s been drinking less but he figures he’s safe now. He’s with friends and he can let go a little. The faint sounds from neighboring camps mix with the booze and the buzz of insects, lulling Michael to sleep. 

He sits up with a start sometime later. He’s not sure how much time has passed but it’s getting dark. Glancing around, he sees Stinson and Madison chatting on the other side of the fire, and the dog alone beside a tree. But Tabor is gone.

He walks around the campsite. Nothing. “Tabor, where are you?” he calls. Still nothing. 

He heads into the woods, scanning the brush around the trees for the cat. Madison and Stinson join the search. After nearly an hour, they meet back up at their campsite. “What the hell was I thinking, bringing her here?” Michael says, distressed. 

“I was even worried about bringing Bobby,” Madison says. “This place is full of bears.” 

“Fuck!” Michael yells.

“She’s around somewhere,” Stinson says. “We just have to keep looking.”

Back in the bushes, Michael finds large paw prints in the dirt, too large for a house cat. All around, he hears rustling and glimpses unidentifiable creatures melting into the dusk. He loses track of time stumbling through the brush. It’s like he’s being paid back for the sin of running away from home so many times.

He wanted to keep Tabor safe; he thought he could pull it together enough to take care of her. Obviously, he was wrong. 

Above them, an owl hoots. “Hang on,” Stinson says. “Did you hear that?” 

 The bird hoots again. Then they hear the faint sound of a rumbling purr. Stinson looks up, flashing his phone light. The beam skims off branches. Fifteen feet up, perched on the boughs of a tree, Tabor sits lazily looking down at them.

“Oh my God,” Michael says, and he begins to cry. He’s spent much of his adult life blacking out and blocking out bad memories. But now, he thinks, he has a cat who depends on him and loves him wholeheartedly, and he’s endangering her. He decides to stop drinking—at least for a little while—and to pay a visit to his foster father, Walter.  

Putting the nightmare of Yosemite behind them, Michael and Tabor hitch to Montana to drop in on Walter. Along the way, they connect with Kyle, Michael’s young friend from Portland. Outside the Helena city limits, they follow dusty, desolate roads. The air is thick with the smell of horses, wood smoke, and wildflowers. On a quiet country lane, the only other signs of life in the heat-shimmering emptiness is a flock of wild turkeys slinking out of the yellow grass.

The cat is cranky and complaining from her perch on top of Michael’s backpack. “She needs lunch,” he says as they walk past a pasture. “When she gets too hot and hungry, she gets a temper like a tiger.”

They climb over a fence into a hilly meadow. Michael leads them to a shady spot to rest beneath a stand of blossoming cottonwoods. A few hundred yards in the distance, a lone cow shows up on the crest of a hill. When Michael glances up after digging through his bag for the cat’s dishes, he notices a couple more appear. 

Kyle gets out a deck of cards. Michael started dealing the cards. As he pauses to stub out his cigarette, he looks back over his shoulder and sees that more cows join the herd. 

But Tabor is the first to sense that the herd’s mood is changing. She looks up from her dish toward the hill, her eyes widening and her tail swelling out into a brush, snarling. She is badly spooked. 

“Holy shit! We gotta run,” Michael scrambles to his feet as the herd surges down the hill toward them. He steps on Tabor’s leash before she can bolt to the end of it. When he picks her up, she latches her claws into his forearm, and tears a huge gash. But Michael feels no pain. He’s too scared to drop her and lose her under the trampling hooves. 

“What the hell?” Kyle says, freezing momentarily.

Gripping Tabor, who is trying to escape his arms, Michael yells back to Kyle, “Run at them. Wave your arms and scream at the top of your lungs until they back off. Then run like hell.”  

Early one June morning, Michael, Tabor and Kyle get dropped off in downtown Helena. The sun rises over the Big Belt Mountains to the East and floods the valley with light. The vintage storefronts—the Parrot Confectionary with its century-old soda fountain, Dave’s Pawn Shop sparkling with antique gems—it all looks exactly like it did when Michael lived there. It feels like a homecoming.

“I used to deliver milk here,” he tells Kyle as they walk through the wide boulevards past Victorian lamp posts and turn-of-the-century rose-stone buildings. “I was about your age.”

They turn onto Cannon Street and walk to a modest yellow clapboard house at the end of a cul-de-sac. Michael goes around the back with Kyle trailing. A fleet of old cars and a rusting pickup truck block the alleyway past the backyard. Crossing the yard, he notices that the sunflowers he planted last summer have grown into giants, their lovely, lionlike heads turned skyward.

“Walter,” Michael shouts, pushing open the screen door. Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues” drifts from the stereo. 

Walter steps into the kitchen and sees Michael with Tabor clinging to his shoulder. In his seventies, with a shock of white hair and silver-rimmed glasses, Walter stands with a slight stoop. He scans Michael up and down—the dirt, blood, grass stains on his clothes and his scabby, scratched-up arms. “Have you been clawed by a grizzly? You look like shit.” 

“Thanks,” Michael says, smiling. 

“Is that a cat? You walked across America with a cat on your back? That’s crazy. Just plain crazy.” Walter stalks off in a huff, grumbling, “Better not upset Gus.” Over the years, he has taken in many strays but he’s down to one skittish, smoky-gray 13- year-old Persian named Gus, who scampers out of the living room when they enter. 

“Are you mad at me?” Michael asks, cradling Tabor in his arms.

Walter reclines in his ragged, old yellow easy chair scratched to the bone by his cats. “I don’t hear from you for ages,” he says. “Then you show up with another cat. I’m in my retirement. I don’t want another cat.” 

“I’m not dumping her on you.” 

“When you have an animal, I don’t care whether it’s a dog, cat, parrot or bear, it’s a real commitment.” 

“You used to tell me, ‘Anyone who’s on the down-and-out heals himself with animals.’”

“You’re still on the down-and-out,” Walter snaps. “We better take that cat to the vet. There’s no telling what diseases she might’ve picked up on your travels.” 

“Tabor doesn’t have any diseases,” Michael says defensively. 

At the veterinary clinic, Michael is on edge. The consultation room smells of disinfectant. When the vet walks in, Tabor tenses. 

“It’s OK, sweetheart,” the doctor whispers, stroking the cat reassuringly. He asks about Tabor’s history. Michael tells him about finding her in the rain, living on the beach and dodging bears in Yosemite. The vet chuckles. “Sounds like she’s had quite an adventure.” Turning back to the cat, he feels Tabor’s joints and puts a miniature stethoscope to her heart. 

“We should have her vaccines all caught up,” Walter suggests. 

 The vet nods and sweeps Tabor off the table. Slung over his shoulder, Tabor shoots Michael a look of betrayal.

When the vet reemerges with Tabor in his arms, he seems troubled. “She’s up to date with her shots,” he begins. “But there’s another issue.”

“Is she OK?” Michael asks, immediately worried. 

“She has a microchip.” 

“A chip?” 

“She has an owner. She was reported missing in Portland in September 2012.”  

Walter looks out the kitchen window at Michael sitting on a stack of logs against the back of the garage in the backyard, chain-smoking. Tabor is playing in the dry grass, batting her paw at the twilight moths, blissfully unaware that her life is about to change again. The vet gave them the owner’s phone number. Now it’s up to Michael to call.

Ten months ago, he didn’t want a cat, and now he can’t imagine living without her. His life had been ripped apart losing Mercer, but this little stray had helped him start putting the pieces back together. He watches Tabor in a daze and thinks back to all the nights he spent with her under the tree, looking at the sunset, the moon and stars. 

Sitting on the grass quietly, Kyle rolls a cigarette. He can see Michael is crushed. “Maybe you should just keep her.”

“I could, but she deserves to go home.” Michael knows he can easily hit the road and disappear. But the last thing he wants is to cause somebody else pain. He also knows he isn’t providing the best home for her. He imagines her happily eating food in some stranger’s fancy house. As much as he loves Tabor, he’s always felt that he didn’t deserve her.

Walter walks outside and puts his hand on Michael’s shoulder. “This is tough. I’m happy to make the call if you like.”

Michael nods, pulls the piece of paper out of his pocket and hands it back to Walter. “But I wanna take her back myself.” 

Walter goes back inside and pours himself a tonic and lime. He takes a sip, picks up the phone and dials the number. In a moment, he hears Ron Buss’ voice. 

“My name’s Walter Ebert. We’ve got your cat right here.” 

“Oh my God, ” Ron says. “I knew she was alive. I could feel it.”

“My son found her on the streets and they’ve been traveling together. Mike feels terrible about taking her and wants to bring her back home.”  

“You honestly don’t have to go through the trouble. I can fly there tomorrow and pick her up myself.” 

But Walter explains that Michael wants one last trip with the cat. “They’ve spent ten months together. Leaving her in 24 hours would be too abrupt, too traumatic for both of them. It will only take a few days.” 

There’s silence on the other end of the phone. “Sure,” Ron says at last. “Whatever’s best for you. I’m unbelievably grateful to yourself and Mike.” 

A few days later, after a breakfast of coffee and pancakes, Walter drops Michael, Kyle and Tabor off on the edge of town near the on-ramp to I-90. It took them almost two weeks to get to Montana. Now, the moment they get to the freeway in Helena, two Native American women, with a tawny puppy riding between them, stop and offer to drive them all the way to Spokane. It’s an amazing offer and they get in. But after only a couple hours, Kyle can see Michael getting anxious. Finally, Michael asks the women to let them out in St. Regis, a tiny backwater in the western Montana wilderness.

“Here?” the woman asks, surprised. They haven’t even gotten to Idaho and there’s nothing around them: just a freeway overpass, sky-scraping pines and a lot of scrub brush. 

“Yeah, this is great.”

Kyle doesn’t say anything. He understands what Michael is thinking. Under normal circumstances, a ride like this would be gold. But now, it only cuts down on the time that Michael has left with Tabor, and he wants to stretch it out.

As the women drive away, Michael and Kyle crawl under the freeway overpass and set up a small campsite. Swirls of purple clouds float over the mountains and lightning shoots across the darkening sky. It starts to drizzle, then turns into a downpour. So, for two days, they cook, play cards and live underneath the roar of traffic. Trucks, cars, motorcycles—everything rolls over them and they ignore it all. Michael is grateful for every minute. At night, he snuggles with Tabor in his sleeping bag.

Reluctantly, they get back on the road and make it to Idaho quickly. At a truck stop near Coeur D’Alene, a cowboy in a battered pickup pulls over and offers them a lift. As they load their rucksacks into the truck, Tabor slips free of her leash and bolts away.

“Tabor, no!” Out of the corner of his eye, Michael can see wary drivers slowing down and swerving away from the cat. 

The rest stop sits alongside a multi-lane freeway and Tabor hurtles towards the traffic. Michael rockets after her as the cars blur past, blasting them with rushes of air. Tabor slows to a trot along the white line. 

“Tabor, come back to me. Please!” Michael begs, edging closer to the scared, helpless cat, his heart pounding wildly.

She stops, looks back at him and meows. She doesn’t move. He catches up to her and scoops her into his arms.

Ten months later, Michael and Stinson walk to Ron’s house. Halfway down the street, they see Tabor lazily stretched out on the picnic table on the front lawn, soaking up the morning sun. When Michael calls her, she sits up, staring in their direction, her ears twitching back and forth. They sit down at the table to stroke her.

Stinson taps her new copper ID tag. “She’s back to being Mata Hairi again. Must be confusing.”

“Don’t see why, I got two names,” Michael says, suddenly wistful. “Giving her up was one of the hardest things I ever had to do aside from burying Mercer.” 

“I can’t believe Ron’s still letting her out like this.” 

“Oh, I’m sure he’s inside listening through the screen door. If we even try to pick her up, he’ll probably come out and start throwing cutlery at us.” Creto stares out of the blaze of jasmine on the porch. Tabor scrambles up the steps to join him. 

Stinson smiles and says, “Guess that’s her telling you, ‘No way, are you taking me on another 4,000-mile road trip.’” 

They walk down the street.