Cats II--Rufus

Bella, Besame, and Zoe aren't the only cats we've had in our lives. For me, the most memorable was Rufus.

Rufus was a chartreuse, one of the oldest breeds in the world. He looked like a Russian Blue, with the same short, rumpled-looking gray coat, but, instead of being long and lean, he looked like a full potato sack on old man legs. He wasn't a "show" cat--his eyes weren't the proper gold/copper color, but the light green of the liqueur that was first made in the French Monastery of Chartreuse. Whoever had owned him previously had neutered him to make certain the "faulty" genes weren't passed on to the next generation.

Rufus appeared at our back door one day and immediately made himself at home. My then- husband said, "we have enough cats in this house" (we had two), took him off to the new housing development a couple of miles away and left him there, telling everyone that "He'll find a good home on his own. He found us, didn't he?"

Are you familiar with the children's song, "The Cat Came Back"? In each verse, a cranky old man tries to get rid of a cat by various ingenious means while the chorus counterpoints with "The cat came back the very next day." So did Rufus, once again walking in the back door as though he owned the place, talking all the while. I could almost hear him saying, "That was an interesting car ride, but I wouldn't want to take another one, thanks. And by the way, I'm starved. When's dinner?"

Well, "Any cat who can find his way back here deserves to stay," and stay he did.

Rufus is the only cat I've ever known who hugged you. Seriously. When someone picked him up, he'd reach as far as he could around that person's neck and purr like a motorcycle climbing a steep hill. Anyone could pick him up, even if he was in the middle of a meal or a nap. With a houseful of teenagers, our own and assorted "strays" (neighborhood kids, foster kids, the foster kids' siblings, etc.) he was the favorite.

He loved humans, but no other life form. Within a week, he was "top cat" and brooked no opposition from anything with more than two legs. He was a great hunter and I was often given "presents" of mice, birds and garter snakes. (Don't ask why I was so favored, I haven't the slightest idea.)

He lived with us for two years, but disappeared the week before we were to move away, as suddenly as he'd appeared. It was January, bitterly cold with an unusual fall of snow. The neighbors' dogs had formed a loose hunting pack and we think he ran afoul of them, or possibly a hungry raccoon. We never even found a tuft of gray fur on the snow or under the trees to tell us what happened.