My husband, Laurence (a longtime comicbook fan), who came into our lives seven years later, used to say that Homer was my “symbiote.” When I was happy, Homer rejoiced. If I was in a bad mood, Homer also took to moping around the house.
It was hard to stay in a bad mood for very long, though, with Homer around. He loved getting into the kind of trouble that could always coax a laugh out of me—scaling a pair of jeans hanging in the closet to reach some forbidden top shelf where I’d stashed a trove of cat toys, or “hiding” in plain sight in the middle of the floor (being blind, Homer thought quiet and invisible were the same thing) as he prepared to spring out at me in a “surprise” attack. Despite those early predictions that he might never be more than a “scaredy-cat,” Homer lived a life of courage and joy—and became proof positive, to all who knew him, that nobody can ever tell you what your potential is.
If you already know Homer, you’ll get to catch up with some old acquaintances through the pages of this tale. You’ll also meet a couple of furry new additions to our household, which has continued to grow and flourish since Homer’s story was published and he was first introduced to the world.
If you’re a newcomer, we’re delighted that you’ve chosen to spend some of your holiday season with our family. More than just about anything else he loved—and he fiercely loved many, many things—Homer’s greatest joy was making new friends.
When most people think about cats at the holidays, their thoughts are more apt to turn to mischief than miracles. If you’re a cat person yourself (and I’m guessing you are), then you don’t need to see any one of dozens of viral videos to know what cats will do to a Christmas tree—the gleeful way they smash ornaments, tangle up lights, shred carefully handcrafted paper trimmings, or simply knock the whole tree down altogether. And heaven help your poor angelic tree topper—perhaps handed down in your family for generations—if it falls into the pitiless clutches of your feline friend.
Homer—the blind, black cat I adopted as a very young kitten in 1997—destroyed exactly one Christmas tree in just such a fashion. It was the first I had allowed myself to indulge in after moving out of my parents’ house. After its destruction, with many a regretful sigh, I gave up on the idea of having a holiday tree of my very own. I learned to make do with a single strand of multihued lights festooned around the living room ceiling—although achieving even that much holiday cheer was something of a chore with Homer around. He’d follow behind me, yanking the string of lights down as fast as I could fasten it up, twining the lights (and his body along with them) into increasingly complex knots until finally, my patience exhausted, I’d yell, “Homer! Enough already!”
Then there was the year when I made the fatal error of leaving unattended for one minute (one minute, I tell you!) the pile of holiday gifts I’d spent two hours painstakingly wrapping. I returned to find what looked like a crime scene, or the wreckage left behind by a school of paper-loving piranhas that had somehow made it from water to land. Every year after that—in a gesture I made with profound love, but also with the certain knowledge that I was allowing Homer to shake me down in what was basically an oldschool protection racket—I’d bury a catnip toy in some tissue paper, place it carefully in the kind of flip-top box Homer could easily open, and wrap the whole thing in colorful gift paper topped with ribbons.
I liked to joke about Homer’s “superpowers”—the off-the-charts hearing that allowed him to catch buzzing flies (flies he couldn’t even see!) in midair; the keen sense of smell capable of detecting his favorite deli turkey even through four or five layers of wax paper and plastic bags. So it was no surprise that Homer’s sensitive nose could detect the scent of catnip lurking in the depths of his holiday gift box, and I think he enjoyed tearing the box, paper, and ribbon to pieces almost as much as he loved the catnip-laced prize itself. In any event, this seasonal bribe usually ensured the safety of all my other wrapped gifts—although I still had to guard my spool of ribbon, using my whole body to shield it, as carefully as the Secret Service guards the president.
There’s plenty of feline mischief in the tale I’m about to tell, because Homer was, above all things, a mischievous, fun-loving cat. Ultimately, though, this is the story of a bona fide holiday miracle that happened in our own home, before our own eyes.
Before we go back, however, to five years ago when all this happened, I first have to take you back a bit farther—to just over two thousand years ago. Most people know the story of Christmas and the idea of Christmastime as a joyous season when miracles abound. But not as many know the story of Hanukkah, which typically falls near Christmas on the calendar. Both stories are important to this one.
Long ago, in the second century BCE, Greek forces occupied the land of Israel and persecuted the Jewish people cruelly for many, many years. Finally, a man named Judah from a small village called Modi’in joined with his five brothers to lead a rebellion against the Greeks. His “army” was seven thousand untrained peasants pitted against a Greek contingent of fifty thousand professional soldiers. The Greeks came to call Judah the “Maccabee” (Greek for “hammer”) for the fierce strength and courage he showed in the face of such overwhelming odds. Eventually, there was a decisive battle at the Great Temple in Jerusalem and the Jewish rebels won, driving the Greeks from Israel for good.
That victory came at a price, however, with the holy Temple sustaining heavy damage. Worst of all, there was only enough oil left to keep the Eternal Flame—sacred symbol of a living God that could never, ever be allowed to go out—burning for one more day. It would take at least eight days for new oil to be made and sanctified, and it was simply impossible for one day’s worth of oil to last that long. Miraculously, though—without any additional oil or fuel to keep it going—the Eternal Flame burned for all eight of those days. This became known as the Miracle of the Lights, and it’s commemorated every year as the holiday of Hanukkah.
It was a small miracle, perhaps, as such things go. Not quite as dramatic as a burning bush or the Red Sea parting. Still, it’s a reminder that even a small flame can shed a great light.
This story—the one you’re about to read—is the story of such a miracle. It’s the story of a very small cat who had, we were told, only a little light left in him. Just enough to burn for another two weeks at most, if we were lucky.
And yet, that small light would grow into a great one. It was a light that—in defiance of all logic or medical science—continued to burn, bright and fierce.
And it didn’t burn for only two weeks. It would burn for the better part of another year.
It was early December 2012 when Homer, who was then fifteen years old, fell over in a faint one afternoon while we were playing a round of that everpopular game, Change The Bedsheets. In a panic, Laurence and I rushed him to the vet’s office. Ultimately, Homer was diagnosed with acute liver failure, his liver values (the level of the toxins, typically filtered out by the liver, that were present in his blood) being fifteen hundred percent higher than what was normal for a cat. “Incompatible with life” was the phrase the doctor used the next day, when the blood work came back from the lab, in explaining Homer’s numbers to me.