The Mayor of Lake Walker
Posted on | October 10, 2026 | No Comments
As darkness gathered that October evening, it was as if he was waiting for me. A large ginger cat sat un-perturbed on the front steps of my new home, watching me dump my belongings onto the driveway in a frantic bid to get the moving van back to Penske in Pigtown. But what was that cat doing there? I scrambled up a slick verge to meet him. Was there a tag? Had the previous residents forgotten him?
He submitted to a pet, then slowly — so slowly — and with a signature swish of the tail, retreated into an azalea hedge, and thence the night.
His name, it turned out, was Tabor, after a lake in Ohio, where as a kitten he had ingratiated himself to a pair of Marylanders, who brought him home to Baltimore. But it was years later, and only by his title, that I came to know him. As a portly adult, Tabor was known throughout our neighborhood of Lake Walker as “the Mayor.” Term limits didn’t apply. Everyone, it seemed, had a story about the Mayor.
There was the one about the Mayor making it his routine to join a local family’s walk by climbing in their stroller. How the Mayor hopped in a delivery truck and ended up in Frederick, roughly 50 miles west. The time the Mayor was seen chasing a fox around a house. Twice. How his owners put a message out on Facebook to stop feeding him. My favorite from a lovely appreciation in our local newsletter: how the Mayor had a two week Rumspringa in the Drumcastle apartment of students from Towson State.
As I began gardening, the Mayor would call around to inspect. Only when it was not too hot, and not too cold, would he stop for a nap on the hood of my car. Then there were the random encounters, when we would cross paths, he on his way somewhere, me somewhere else. Constituent spotted, he would pause for a pat and proceed on his way. Never hurried. Even in the middle of the road. Always with a parting swish.
I am not a fan of outdoor cats and implore those reading this to keep their cats inside. But, in his defense, the Mayor’s At Large status predates what we now know about the ravages of roaming house-cats on wildlife, especially birds. The simplest explanation for my never having seen the Mayor with prey is the number of dishes left out for him on neighborhood porches. However the Mayor did, from time to time, tangle with interloping cats.
When the community association’s newsletter arrived this week with news of his death, and with an anecdote-rich item by an eloquent neighbor, I cannot describe the gratitude for the Mayor’s greeting that fall night five years ago, almost to the day. Or the sadness. Aplomb has left Lake Walker. I can only imagine what will creep out of the shadows now that the Mayor is dead. I can only hope it’s ginger.
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