*Rememberings*: Missing Marshie
He was black and white and beloved all over, and my neighborhood will never be the same.
My neighborhood is three roughly east-west streets and six roughly north-south streets, not a gated community by any means, but a little enclave nonetheless. Because two of our streets are one-way and because we abut a fenced-off university, cars have only four routes into the neighborhood, from only two directions. The resulting lack of traffic makes us a haven for kids, bikers, runners, walkers, deer, bunnies, the occasional fox and the kind of cat who, though domesticated, can’t accept a life indoors. Until last month, one of those cats reigned supreme as everybody’s favorite guy, the cat of our neighborhood’s collective heart.
Who knows where he came from. Sometime in 2018 he started showing up at a particular house on Varsity Road, lounging on the sidewalk out front and the porch around back. He was slender (if a little potbellied), young but not a baby, gritty street-cat white with a black tail and black curtain bangs parted down the middle and a large swath of black on his back as though he’d been draped in a bearskin rug. You or I might not have thought marshmallow, but the five-year-old girl of the house did, and it stuck. If the back door was open, Marshie would stroll in and find a comfy spot for a long, hard nap. “Like he was coming off a bender,” the mom of the house says. “Like if Uncle Buck were a cat.”
Obviously he charmed the family’s pants off. Obviously they fell deeply in love. But even though they fed him and took him to the vet and had him neutered, even though he slept in their beds, they didn’t think of Marshmallow as theirs. Stewards, the mom felt. Not owners. So in 2020, when the family decided to move out of state, they agonized: take him or no?
Of course, by this time, Marshie had charmed many neighbors. Such a people person. If he saw you coming along the sidewalk, he trotted up or sauntered over or flomped and rolled and stretched and waited for you to come to him. He bonded with toddlers through sliding glass doors. He snoozed on the warm hoods of cars. His territory wasn’t huge, but it was deep. Ultimately, the Varsity Road family decided that here was where Marshie belonged, and when they moved, a family around the corner, on Reynolds Place, stepped in to become his new people.
The years passed. Marshie had all the comforts at the new caretakers’ house, including a Christmas stocking at Christmas, but he was a cat of the world. He climbed trees. He prowled decks. He commandeered little kids’ backyard playthings. He had a taste for puddles and buckets of dirty rainwater. He killed birds and baby bunnies. He lost some fights and got some stitches. If a neighbor thought he was limping, they’d text the caretakers, and the dad of the house would check him over when Marshie came around for bed that night. He’d paw at your door at 6:45 a.m., hoping for breakfast. If you left a steak to rest unattended on the grill, he’d help himself. He was brazen that way. He had a gift—maybe his best—for making himself at home. He tricked multiple households into thinking they were his sole source of food. (My husband and I once ran into a college girl who, after meeting Marshie when she parked in our neighborhood, started regularly bringing him cans of tuna, believing she was singlehandedly keeping him alive. When we told her his name, she went all gooey like a you-know-what.)
Every time my husband and I went on our way after a Marshie encounter, we told him, “Be careful.” But the words were pro forma, because Marshie was so clever and savvy and wise. The last time I saw him, I called his name with the delight you feel running into a great old friend, and he promptly headed in my direction. And then kept going, psych!—because his actual target was a college boy carrying bags of takeout. He knew what he was doing, Marshie did.
And yet, on April 19, word went out on our neighborhood Facebook that Marshie had died. Apparently, despite our lightly trafficked streets, he was hit by a car, but the circumstances aren’t the point. The point is that two days after we got the news, Marshie’s friends and neighbors gathered in the early evening on Reynolds Place to celebrate him. Thirty-five-ish people showed up, on foot, on bike, on scooters, in strollers. Presiding over the occasion were the caretaker father (who is and always will be ID’d in my phone as “Marshmallow’s dad”) and a magnificent life-size Lego Marshie one of the caretaker kids had made a few months earlier. Someone (well, I) had laid a bunch of crepe-paper flowers at the base of the oak tree Marshie liked to climb. Children brought drawings of Marshie. People told stories about Marshie. And though opinions on the advisability of letting cats outdoors surely varied, the consensus was that Marshie wouldn’t—couldn’t—have been himself if he’d had to spend his life on the inside. He wasn’t at all averse to the comfort of a warm bed or a soft couch, but if he hadn’t been free to be outside, he wouldn’t have been able to shine his brazenly beautiful Marshmallow light.
Marshie wasn’t just a member of our neighborhood—he was one of the things that helped make it a neighborhood. He was a great neighbor: happy to see you, have a little catch-up and then go about his business, leaving you to go about yours. Even a terrible day was a good day when you turned a corner and there he was: louche or playful or sleepy or insouciant or lasered-in on prey. I’m not much of a pray-er myself, but a prayer I’ve sometimes prayed for ones I love is that they find a way to live up to their full potential. I think Marshie did. I think everyone gathered on Reynolds Place last month would have agreed. As the evening got cooler, people hugged themselves, and as things wound down, they hugged the caretaker dad. Someone said the birds and baby bunnies must surely be rejoicing. But we poor people went home with tiny Marshie-shaped holes in our hearts. 😔
Thanks for sharing this story, and I agree about the debate of allowing domesticated cats outside -- they enjoy it so, but it sure shortens their lives..... our neighborhood recently came together to raise money for a injured cat that no one seemed to claim... . He's perfect..... a neighbor took him in and sees that he is fed, but we feel ownership. I occasionally see him when I walk. I love community. So much a part of living well.
I loved this piece. Brought tears to my eyes. Good photos too.