I first saw him from a distance hanging around the combo complex in late summer 2001, but I didn’t make friends with him for several months. One day I came out of my patio and he was a few feet away in the walkway, looking worried by my sudden appearance and about to run. I knelt down and reached out slowly with one hand and he came up to sniff me. When I first tried to pet him he immediately turned into a total affection monster. You have never seen a cat so desperate for contact.

Then after a minute or so of petting he nipped my hand. I said “No!” and stopped petting him for a few seconds. He never nipped me again, so tag him as a fast learner.

Finally, when I wanted to go back inside, he tried to follow me in. I couldn’t let him do that because I assumed he was somebody else’s cat and bringing him into my place wouldn’t be right. Silly me.

After that it got to be a struggle going out my front door because he would see me almost every time and if he saw me he would always run up for affection (good) and try to follow me in (bad). Finally I came up with a trick. I’d come in to my patio, unlock the door and open it just an inch, then turn back toward the walkway. He would be so eager for me to go back to the affection place that he would lead me out instead of following… and I could close the gate behind him and make a run for it. He would jump onto the top of the gate and then down into my patio, but he was never fast enough. He never caught on (so maybe not quite such a fast learner?) and I felt guilty about tricking him, but I needed to get in and out somehow.

Finally, after a few months I met the people who had been feeding him, which explained why he was hanging around. They weren’t letting him in to their place and didn’t think of him as really theirs (and they obviously weren’t giving him enough affection) and they were ok with me adopting him, so despite a childhood history of cat allergies…

When I first brought him in I of course set up a litter box and showed him where it was, but he must not have understood because after he had been in for about 24 hours he walked into the room where I was and gave a rather apologetic little meow, and he somehow looked really desperate. When I got up he immediately ran to the bathroom and when I got to the door he was scratching on the floor like cats do in the litter box before… you know. I caught on and ran to open the front door and he ran out to immediately do his thing. When he was back inside I showed him the litter box again and all was well.

Thinking back, I guess he didn’t really want to use the bathroom, but he wanted to tell me what he needed, he had some idea what bathrooms were for (they have good noses), and he knew how to let me know. Why else would he have gone out of his way to attract my attention?

He saved my home from being broken in to once. Really. He was a watchcat 🙂

Some background: I have a sliding glass door in front of my unit, and I keep the blinds up a few inches so cats can look out into my patio. Back then I used to keep the patio gate propped open with a brick so he could go in & out without having to jump.

So one morning I’m woken up early by a really loud bang. Went to the window and saw somebody in the walkway heading west and didn’t think much about it because I didn’t know where the noise had come from. Was surprised not to see my cat because he was usually right there first thing in the morning. When I checked outside I saw that the brick was just a few inches from the sliding glass door, with fresh dings in the patio cement and one corner of the brick to make it totally clear what had caused that noise. Much later I found my cat hiding behind the water heater. So, for those of you who haven’t figured it out, that guy I saw was about to smash the glass door when my cat heard him and came to look. Then the baddie was startled into dropping the brick and the noise was awfully close to my cat’s sensitive ears and they both ran away.

For a while after I got him he would drive me crazy “helping” me on the computer, like resting on my mouse hand or (mostly) lying behind the keyboard and in front of the monitor. My banner pic is him doing that. It would have been ok except his chin would often rest on the escape key.

Finally I wised up and put another chair next to my computer chair. He caught on immediately and started napping there instead of behind/on the keyboard, and we were both happy. But after a while there would be a gentle pressure on my arm, and since we were both on the same wavelength I immediately knew to swivel my chair so the armrest wasn’t in the way and he could step across onto my lap for another nap.

I used to have just one water bowl for him, in the kitchen near the food, but I guess he didn’t like that because I saw him drinking from the toilet in the upstairs bathroom. Hmmm. So I added a 2nd bowl there and I was lucky enough to be there to see when he found it.

He walked in, stopped, and looked back and forth several times. Down and to the left (good) and up to the right (bad – toilet). Finally he made the right choice, but to him it was a real choice.

Probably the thing that made him most special was how polite and quiet he was, and how he could always find a clear, non-annoying way to tell me what he wanted. Other cats might meow and leave you wondering what they want, but he was usually silent.

He liked to play with one particular toy, a ball & bell attached to a string attached to a stick so I could wave the stick and move the ball across the living room floor. He had two ways to tell me it was play time. Since he liked to attack by charging from behind my TV stand, he could just go there with only his head showing and wait for me to notice. Or he might walk across the room and nudge the stick with his paw.

But mostly he would just point to what he wanted.

When he wanted me to let him out, instead of scratching on the door like some cats, he would just sit near it, nose facing the door while he waited for me to notice him. If I was upstairs and couldn’t see him, there would be just one soft, apologetic meow. When I got to the the top of the stairs he would be looking up at me from the bottom. As soon as he saw me he would move over to the door and be waiting when I got down.

If he was inside when I was ready to leave for work he would always go downstairs with me (it’s a 3-story condo, garage & laundry room lowest). Then he would make a show of facing back towards the stairs, telling me to go there instead of leaving. That actually worked once, when I was tired and had a lot of vacation days saved up and decided to call in lazy.

Once when I was outside with him I stopped to talk with some neighbors. I must have spent too long, because he went as far toward home as he could without going out of sight, and then sat facing where he wanted me to go. I was facing the wrong way so it was a neighbor who saw him and told me what he wanted.

But the clincher was the Great Tuna Request. I rarely ate tuna but when I did (maybe 5 or 6 times in his life) I would give him the juice. One time after he was done I left the juice bowl on the floor next to the water and food bowls. And let me mention that he had licked the tuna bowl shiny clean – better than my dishwasher. The next day I saw him sitting directly in front of you-know-which bowl, staring intently at it and waiting for me to notice. “Make it full!”. It didn’t work, but points for being a good communicator.

He also for some reason loved canned Chile with beans. Well, not the beans, but the first time I opened a can he was right there to lick the Chile until there was nothing but beans at the top of the can. After one or two times we worked out a routine – he would pretend not to notice until he heard the sound of the spoon scraping the side of the can and knew I was almost done. Then he would show up, I would set the can down and let him lick the inside, and then I would open the other end of the can and let him lick that. Everybody was happy.

Things he loved:

Napping in my recliner: for the first few weeks I had to move him so I could sit, but before long all I had to do was stand there and he would move over onto the armrest until I sat down, and then he would move back onto my lap. This would work even if we was sound asleep.

Zoom Groom: he loved being brushed with that. If he had gone a half hour without an affection fix, all I had to do was pick it up and show it to him and we would run across the room to jump into my lap. When I brushed the top of his head he would reach up with his front paws like he was trying to press it down harder – second most goofy thing I’ve even seen. Note there are separate versions for dogs & cats, made of different rubber. He was allergic to the dog version. Pay attention when you order yours from Amazon.

Belly rubs: he would halfway want to respond by shredding me, but he was much too gentle to actually hurt me. So he would bite gently on the meat between my thumb and first finger, while wrapping his front paws around my wrist and pressing his claws lightly against my skin, with hind claws ready to shred farther up my arm. Then he would freeze and look totally goofy. Totally. But he knew that if I was wearing a leather glove it was ok to go wild and a good time would be had by all.

Licking me: especially in summer. If I was wearing shorts he would lick my leg – like he wouldn’t stop till he had licked my whole leg. If I wanted to get any sleep I had to close the bedroom door and keep him out.

The Stair Game: when I was going up or down the stairs he would usually run past me and try to anticipate where I was going. But unlike a certain other cat he would pass wide and was never a trip-hazard. At bedtime he knew I wasn’t just going up to get something and when I got there he would be in attack position not quite hiding behind something. Then I would put one foot down onto the top step and he would run down to the bottom on the stairs. Take my foot off the top step and he would run back up and past me. After about 7 round trips he would be tired and wait at the bottom and I could go to bed.

The TV remote: Yes, he would try to pull it toward him and take possession. Definitely a guy cat 🙂

He sounds like such a sweet cat.

He is gorgeous! Aren’t you a lucky mama!

Such a handsome cat and he sounds absolutely lovely ☺️

My dad’s kitties follow him all around the house and won’t stray to far from home.

I just love cats…sigh

I logged in just to ask – did you name him after Nanny Ogg’s tomcat?

This is great! I love a cat story, thanks so much for sharing

@lordcobol,
How did Greebo get his name?