The first cat I ever owned was a stuck up snobby cat who was very independent, the greatest hunter on the planet and tough as nails. He was also unbelievably loyal.
I remember at one point he actually adopted another cat which ended up staying with us. I remember for a few days he stopped eating all his food in the evening which was something he never did, one night I walked into the kitchen to find him licking a rake thin, injured tabby cat, probably about nine months old and encouraging it it eat out of his bowl. This happened for a few nights and he wouldn’t allow us near the kitten, after a while we started putting two bowls down and McNab became a regular fixture of the house.
When Wellington was about 10 years old we found him lying in the corner of the one room and his hind leg was hideously disfigured, it looked like it was actually dipped in acid (Of course we took him to the vet and he made a full recovery), the next day we found the 6 foot boomslang (A highly venomous snake with cytotoxic venom.) Wellington had killed which had obviously managed to bit his leg during the battle. The boomslang was in a bush that us children always used to play around.
Another one of his traits was killing huge cane rats about his own size, dragging them to our back door and miawing until I came out and took them away. It had to be me who took them away (He’d get aggressive if any other member of the family tried to take the rat.). I guess he felt he wasn’t going to mooch off us and he was providing his share of the food around the place.
I apologize in advance if this thread pisses you off in any way.
Next thread will be how your Boerbull dog actually once killed a lion…
But I once had a very clever stray cat. He got perfectly tame, but he didn’t trust strangers and he hated kids. He ate in an outhouse but slept and spent most of his evenings inside with us. If my nephew and niece visited he would spot them, turn around and refuse to enter the house while they were there. If they were on holiday he would live in the garden/outhouse for weeks.
If we had more than one or two guests he would do the same.
My cat before that was on the pill and it worked well enough. Then she dissapeared and after a month we accepted that she was gone… untill she woke up my dad one morning meowing outside the kitchen door with a litter.
Growing up, we had a family cat named Max. Later on we would joke that it was short for ‘Maximum Weight Capacity’.
He was an outdoor cat for the first few years, since we were living in a tiny town out in the middle of nowhere and there wasn’t much risk. He was actually a pretty good hunter at this point and managed to kill a hummingbird or two. When we moved to the city we started keeping him indoors, but he managed to sneak out a few times. Most of the time we caught him before he got too far, but one time he was determined to go wandering, and we searched for hours to no avail. All we could do keep our eyes open and hope someone found him, but winter was fast approaching.
Three months later, right in the middle of winter, I wandered near the front door and heard a pathetic meowing coming from outside. I opened the door and lo and behold, there he was. Much thinner, a little skittish, and his voice had become a bit scraggly (he might have been starting to turn feral), but him nonetheless. It didn’t take long for him to get back to his old fat, lazy self though, and he never ran away again.
One of the apartments we lived in had a long hallway with linoleum flooring and a tight bend in the middle. When Max would have one of his sudden bursts of energy he’d often just go tearing around the place at high speed, and you’d often hear him start running down the hallway, a sudden scramble of claws on linoleum, and then a soft thud as he hit the bend, followed by a brief pause before he’d resume running down the hall.
In college, my landlord adopted two kittens. One of them was a fantastic hunter. He would sometimes bring in mice, birds etc and kill them in the living room, but occasionally he would bring partially-defrosted pork chops home. We theorise that some local old person was defrosting their pork chops on the windowsill or something dumb, and hunting cat would pounce on the frozen prey and drag it home. We thought this was hilarious, and would cook the pork chops for the cats so they could have it for dinner.
The other cat desperately wanted to be a cool hunter like his brother, but wasn’t up to scratch. He would catch dead leaves from the garden, and bring them to doormat, miaowing proudly at his prowess. Sometimes he would also catch pieces of bread or cake that neighbours threw out for the birds in winter. This house was about 3 doors down from the local infant school (5-7yr olds) at the end of a cul-de-sac. In the mornings, the entire road would be jammed up with parents driving their kids to school and trying to park/drop-off/turn around. One morning I stepped outside and all traffic was at a total standstill, and everyone was staring at the road. Right outside our house, little brother cat was sitting in the middle of the road holding up traffic, by eating a large chunk of cake he had just “caught”.
Now I feel bad because I realise I have forgotten the cats names, but they were awesome little critters. I now own two fat orange tabbies who are indoor only, so they can’t entertain me with pork chops or cake. They are still cute and cool as hell though.
Twelve years ago my mother and her husband adopted a cat from the human society. He was a large cat and we named him Elliot. He had had a tough early life, ending up as a blood donor cat for a local vet after his previous owners refused to pay the vet. I was living in the house while going to college and Elliot quickly adopted me as his human since my mother’s husband had a job in a town 300 miles away and I was usually the only one home. At first Elliot stayed indoors but after a few months began to venture outside and soon would stay outside all day but come in at night and sleep next to me under the covers. He was sweet and friendly to people and other cats, even though his size (he had puffy long hair and weighed about 20 pounds) scared most other cats.
One night I came home late to find him injured. A trip to the vet revealed he’d been fighting a dog that had grabbed his stomach and shaken him, piercing through his skin in two places. Luckily Elliot was so fat that it wasn’t muscle or worse that was torn, it was the skin and fat. When I brought him home the vet wanted me to put him in a confined space so I put him in the laundry room, with a very heavy door propped slightly open for air. On the off chance that he got through I also put up a 3 foot board to block him. He managed to get over both and into my bedroom. That’s where he wanted to be while he recovered, I guess because it smelled like me.
I had him until I had to have him put to sleep last year. He was the most affectionate cat I’ve ever had and slept under the covers next to me the entire time.
My older cat, Fizel, is a completely ineffectual hunter. The only times I think he may have caught something were when I woke up to find a mouse and a baby bird (separate occasions) in my house, completely unharmed. The baby bird was pretty easy to catch but the mouse was fast and cagey.
The mouse would go under the desk, then Fizel would go under the desk and chase it out, then he’d run around the desk and chase it back under. I figured I could just anticipate this and catch the mouse when it came running out, but before I could do that, Fizel excitedly ran across the room and out the window, leaving me to catch the mouse on my own.
I also have a picture of Fizel standing within two feet of a squirrel that was burying nuts in the back yard.
When I was growing up, I used to have a cat named Indy. She was a cantankerous old girl, an indoor/outdoor cat. When she was about 3 or 4, she was caught in a fence after being chased by a dog, and was missing for days. My dad finally found her, and drove her the 15 or so miles to the nearest vet, where they said they could amputate for a lot of money, to put her to sleep.
My dad chose to go through with the amputation. She lived longer without 4 legs, living into her teens. She used to love getting scratched on the side of her head which she couldn’t scratch due to missing a back leg, and her stump would move like she was trying to scratch with an invisible leg.
She was a prolific hunter, catching gophers, mice, lizards, snakes … one day she brought a mallard duck into the house, but she had only stunned it. It came back to life while underneath my parents bed, and I spent about 15 minutes chasing it around the house before I got it outside. She also used to stalk the blue herons in the backyard, although they would have speared her if she tried anything.
I’m not sure. Oddly I thought about that as I typed it, thinking that I have seen it spelled both ways. I concluded that it didn’t matter, since cats aren’t sticklers for correct spelling.
I had a siamese cat named Boo-Boo. Boo-Boo would follow me everywhere. Including the cliched “to the school bus stop”. Including the not-so-cliched “to the middle of the swimming hole”. There are few things as scary as a siamese cat cruising toward you in deep water. Cool, but scary.
I had a black, brown, white mutt of a cat named Fifles, a calm and collect grey haired cat named Henry, and a fidetity flesh bitter/vampire cat named Gidget.
