The Cat Who Followed Us Home

By: Jonathan Deane Taylor

My wife and I moved to the Forestbrook area of Myrtle Beach in 2018. We came here to retire, and we specifically wanted to be near the water. We pictured starting our mornings with long walks on the Boardwalk, getting ourselves ready for whatever the day might bring.

Five miles from the ocean seemed close enough.

But we were also worried about storms, so we deliberately bought on the other side of the Intracoastal Waterway. We liked having that little bit of a buffer between us and the Atlantic.

It was our first house together. A quiet cul-de-sac, a spacious backyard, an oversized front lawn. It felt like exactly the place we had been looking for.

We started seeing stray cats on the Boardwalk almost immediately.

We weren’t particularly cat people back then. Issie had had a couple when she was younger—a white cat named Neige and a black cat named Max. There was also Sammy, a Siamese her parents cared for. I’d had Lilly, a tabby.

But we’d never shared a cat together.

With Issie being allergic, the subject had never really come up. So when we saw cats on our walks, we’d admire them from a distance. We’d point them out to each other, remark on how cute they were, and keep walking.

Then came October.

We had been in Myrtle Beach long enough to experience our first real change of seasons. The mornings were getting cooler. The heat was beginning to break, and there were days when a cool breeze came off the ocean. Our Boardwalk walks were becoming even more enjoyable.

One morning, a cat started following us.

We hadn’t seen this one before. It was a beautiful, furry gray cat—almost like a Maine Coon, except normal cat-sized. We immediately decided it was a female. She was too pretty not to be, apparently.

She was soft, fluffy, incredibly friendly, and she kept meowing at us.

We stopped.

We gave this beautiful little creature our complete attention for a moment. Then a moment became several minutes. Eventually we said goodbye and continued our morning walk.

The cat followed us.

More meowing.

We looked back and laughed. We stopped again. More petting. We started walking again.

Still following us.

Around the path just north of the Second Avenue Pier, among the palms and petunias, another couple approached. They were tourists, in Myrtle Beach for the week, and naturally they stopped for the cat too.

We started talking.

They’d seen her before. In fact, they’d seen her several times during their vacation. They pointed out the tipped ear, something we knew very little about at the time. It meant she’d been trapped, fixed and returned. She was, essentially, one of the Boardwalk’s community cats.

But this cat didn’t seem feral to us.

Not even close.

She wanted attention. She wanted affection. She wanted to be around people.

And this couple had apparently decided that we were going to do something about it.

“You should take her.”

They kept working on us. They’d watched her for days. She needed a home. She was obviously friendly. She didn’t belong out here.

I looked at Issie.

Issie very deliberately did not look at me.

I was already gone.

Somewhere during those few minutes, I’d become attached to this beautiful gray ball of fur I’d never seen before in my life. I kept looking at Issie until, finally, her eyes met mine.

I didn’t have to say anything. I begged with my face.

She knew.

Then she said it.

“She needs a name. We can’t take home a cat without a name.”

That was it. We were taking the cat.

The other couple immediately suggested “Fluffy.”

Issie and I looked at each other.

No.

We were not Fluffy parents.

Not here. Not now. Not ever.

The husband had been especially enthusiastic about convincing us to take the cat, and he was a genuinely nice guy. So one of us finally asked him, “Hey, what’s your name?”

“Dan.”

Issie and I looked at each other.

“THAT’S IT!”

We were completely, psychically synchronized.

Danni.

We would name this beautiful little gray girl Danni, after the stranger who had somehow talked two people who weren’t really cat people into taking a Boardwalk cat home with them.

We said our goodbyes, and I scooped Danni into my arms.

Our five-mile walk got cut short that morning. Instead, we headed back to the Jeep carrying a surprise neither of us had any idea we wanted when we’d gotten out of bed a few hours earlier.

We took Danni home.

A few days later, we brought our new little girl to the veterinarian for a checkup.

And that’s when we learned that perhaps we should lose the “i.”

And replace it with a “y.”

Danni was Danny.

We couldn’t have known it then, but bringing Danny home that October morning changed much more than our daily routine.

That friendly gray cat with the tipped ear introduced us to a world that had been right in front of us all along. We began noticing the Boardwalk cats differently. We learned what that tipped ear meant. We learned about community cats, TNR, rescue, feeding, fostering and the people quietly looking after animals most visitors simply walked past.

And somewhere along the way, two people who weren’t particularly cat people became very much cat people.

We had moved to Myrtle Beach imagining retirement mornings walking along the ocean.

Five miles away seemed close enough.

As it turned out, it was exactly close enough.

Because one October morning, on a path through the palms and petunias just north of the Second Avenue Pier, a furry gray cat decided to follow us.

And eventually, we followed him.