Campfyre Stories

After hearing about Princess finding and helping out a stray cat in her building, I started thinking about an old friend of mine who is no longer a part of my life.  However, he has, probably, one of the best stories of any animal that I have ever known.

It was 10 years ago, almost to the day (I remember because the story started about 3 days before my birthday).  A pure black cat, half-Siamese*, wearing a flea collar showed up on our porch and wanted to come in.  He was very friendly and affectionate and one of the most beautiful cats I had ever seen.

We didn’t want to feed him because if you feed a stray, they’ll never leave you alone, so we put out some fresh water for him.  After he showed up for three days straight and we had asked around the neighborhood, no one knew who he belonged to, so we decided to take him in and start the process for finding his family.  He must have had one, since he was wearing a flea collar.  We didn’t want to name him and confuse the poor thing, so we just called him Mr. X (the name stuck).

We put up fliers.  We put an ad in the paper, but no one claimed him.  He was ours, and let me tell you, our tortoiseshell was PISSED, as X was a very presumptuous cat and took over the entire house.  We took him to the vet, got him his shots and took him into our family.

We adored that cat, but he was a lot to handle.  He insisted on going out, though it was against the rules of our neighborhood for him to do so without a leash or tether (neither of which held him).  He was also incredibly social and was well-known about the area.  I think it was close to a year after we took him in that we realized that we couldn’t keep him anymore.  He was just too much.  He terrorized our tortoiseshell, he destroyed the house and he wouldn’t stay inside.

My mother-in-law, Mother Goose, had fallen in love with him and graciously offered to have him come and live with her.

He was very happy with Mother Goose and family, but their toy poodle, Santa K. Merlie, was not as thrilled at having him around.  Like he had done with our cat, he terrorized the poodle, who was significantly smaller than him.  Mr. X would (for example), see Santa sitting on the sidewalk and RUN down the street and over the dog.  Santa would find himself having been passed under the body of the cat and would just shake.

Mr. X knew EVERYONE.  He belonged to the neighborhood.  All the neighbors knew him and would feed him or pet him.  He was a great fellow and everyone loved him…  except the dogs.

But then Mother Goose moved to a condo.  She brought Mr. X with her, but he would go from yard to yard beating up on dogs that were trapped in their respective yards.  The condo residents were, understandably, not happy with this situation and came to complain.  Eventually, Mother Goose realized that Mr. X had to go.

My father-in-law has a cousin who owns a horse farm a few hours away from where they lived.  He checked in with his cousin, who was happy to take in Mr. X, since he needed a good mouse hunter for the barn.

Shortly after Mr. X was shipped off to the farm, he disappeared.  The cousin was a little sad, but also concerned that he might be trying to go back home to Mother Goose’s condo.  A week or so passed, but he never showed up and everyone wondered if he had found another family, but that was not the case.  He had been locked in a horse stall with one of the horses, and they had bonded. 

As a result, Mr. X found himself with a whole new array of horse friends.  He found them to be his equals, from what I hear and even would, from time to time, sleep on the horses backs and even ride them every now and again.

I haven’t heard about him in some time, but I know that he was a very happy cat, living on a horse farm with many equine friends.  And I take a lot of pleasure from the fact that, as passed around as the mystery cat was, he stayed in the family and remained extremely happy.

*The only pure black cats are half-Siamese…  it’s something genetic.  All other black cats are really either very dark brown, have pink noses/paw pads or stray white hairs.  They may also have very dark and subtle tabby markings that you can see in direct light.