A Requiem for Tiger, the Hardware Cat

Tiger died. Or, as James Hopkins said with sadness, “Tiger passed away.”

James was wearing a Tiger sweatshirt the other day when he told me. On it is a large color picture of a large cat with a noble head and a striped gray-and-black coat. Beneath the picture are the words “Tiger fan.”

Tiger was the second living being I met when I moved to my cliff in Pasadena from the Carmel Valley. The first was Mr. Balk, Tiger’s friend and employer. Mr. Balk is the owner and proprietor of Balk’s Hardware Store in South Pasadena. James Hopkins works there.

Obviously, the first place you must find when you move is a good hardware store for tacks, shelf paper, trash barrels, paint, picture hangers, charcoal for the barbecue and garden hoses. Those are just the things you get on the first trip.

I have never asked for anything in Balk’s that they couldn’t find for me. And often I have wondered how they kept track of where everything is. It looks like a Norman Rockwell hardware store with an overlay of Fibber McGee’s closet.

Balk’s has everything from mailboxes to fish in an aquarium in the paint room. On the main counter in the front room with its overflowing ceiling-high shelves, there is almost always a large bowl of fresh, buttery popcorn.

Mr. Balk has had the store for more than 50 years. I do not know Mr. Balk’s first name and it doesn’t matter. I wouldn’t call him by it if I knew it. It would be presumptuous, although he is the friendliest of men, with smiling blue eyes, white hair and a body slender from all those years of moving quickly and effortlessly through those hazardous aisles, like a jaguar through a jungle.

When I heard that Tiger would no longer be greeting customers and helping with the inventory, I called Mr. Balk to find out about this cat with so many friends and such respect.

Tiger was 18 when he died, which means he was a strapping 4-year-old when I met him. Mr. Balk told me about finding him. “He was just a little kitten when someone dumped him and his brother in the alley behind the door. We brought them in before they could be run over or hurt.

“The brother was just as stupid as Tiger was smart. After they were here a couple of days, some people were saying how cute they were and asked if they could have one.” They took the stupid brother.

“Like all of us, Tiger had to learn from experience,” Mr. Balk said. “He had a great deal of adventure in him and he’d go out in the back and get in people’s cars. One day, he was simply gone. We advertised and put up posters and asked everyone who came in the store. Finally, a fellow called and said, ‘I think I have your cat.’ He lived way up in the hills and I asked him to wait just a few minutes until I got there. Of course, it was Tiger and I put him in the car and drove back to the store. He jumped out of the car and ran right into the store and never again walked very far from the back door.”

Whenever I saw Tiger, he was walking the aisles with a measured tread, with a walk like a Chase Manhattan Bank board member on his way into an annual meeting. Tiger did not hurry nor did he slink. The customers all wanted to pet him, which he put up with, even when the children pulled his tail. He’d walk away from that. No scratching--just walk away and jump on something high.

“He really had a great deal of trust and people respected him,” Mr. Balk said.

As the years went by, Tiger’s bones felt the cold and he would curl up on top of the electric cash register on the main counter, enjoying the warmth from the motor. When the cash register clanged and the door banged open, Tiger would open one eye as if checking to see that the staff made correct change. That winter’s day solace went with the coming of the computerized register.

Mr. Balk fed Tiger his breakfast every morning, sometimes giving him a treat of dog food from the refrigerator. Bud Hagemeyer, who has been with Mr. Balk for years, sometimes fed him too. “But he really wouldn’t take ahold until I got there,” Mr. Balk said.

James Hopkins told me, “I used to get to feed him once in a while. He’d sit right there and wait for his breakfast. I’ve only been here a year and half but I really loved Tiger.”

Hazel Webb is the Balk stalwart who knows all about everything, Bud says, “but she is the paint expert.” Another tall, curly-haired young man named Dennis Meacham sold me my mailbox. Mr. Balk has always had a knack for choosing pleasant, obliging and understanding employees. On the day I bought my mailbox, a woman came in who had obviously been asked to do an errand for her husband. She said, “I want some of those little things that go on doors, two of them at the bottom, and wires too with a switch that looks sort of like this,” and she drew a picture in the air with her finger. “Sure,” Hazel said, and went off and got the little door things.

Just before Tiger made his departure, he was disappearing for hours at a time and Mr. Balk was afraid he was getting ready to die. He took Tiger to the veterinarian and said, “If he’s in pain, let’s let him rest. They give so much and trust so much. Tiger was just left in an alley and lived a life that brought pleasure to hundreds of people. I owe him a dignified way home.”

The flag flies in front of Balk’s hardware store every day. He told me, “I admire the President and all the men who are trying to get a world together. You can hardly get this block of merchants together.

“I believe you have to put something back, and I’ve tried. I belong to the Rotary Club, was president of the Chamber of Commerce, am in the Masonic lodge and on the South Pasadena City Council for eight terms. You try to leave something for somebody else.”

Mr. Balk is. And as James Hopkins told me, “Tiger’s still with us. He’s walking around and watching us. And see that?”

He pointed to a framed color picture of Tiger above the door into the back room. It is Tiger in his benevolent proprietor posture, friend of many, intimate of few. If it’s true that you can tell the significance of a death by the hole it leaves, that black-and-gray striped cat left a hole big enough for all of South Pasadena and a lot of Pasadena people to fit into.