We went on many trips to Sequoia National Park and one time we stayed in a “Rustic” cabin. Sadly they closed Giant Village and all the cabins in Sequoia in 1999, but they are still open in KIng’s Canyon and Yosemite. Anyway, the Rustic cabin lived up to its name: at night, mice were running all over the place including across the beds. My mother and I (I was 8 or 9, and my father couldn’t join us on that trip due to being at a conference) shared a bed due to the cold, and my cat got in the other bed, but rather than taking out the mice, he stretched out a paw, played with one, and then went back to sleep.
He mainly just hunted me.
But we were very close and he was an extremely loving cat, and he would come to me first when he needed something, and then to my mother. He could vocalize “Mommy” when he meowed. He was very intelligent and would play fetch, but he had a tendency to not do traditional cat things.
We bought him as a kitten after he had been returned (my mother intended to buy him but someone beat her to it, buying him for their daughter, but it turned out she was allergic to cats), however, his temporary owners in an act of obscene cruely cut off his whiskers. Fortunately they grew back and were quite magnificent, as was his tail, which was just under a foot and a half in length. There was something about his gait and his hindquarters which was unusual which makes me think he might have had a back problem; his rear paws would clatter when he ran. He also had no interest in usual cat things, for example, we bought him a cat castle kind of tower to climb and hide in but he completely shunned it. On the plus side he did not do that annoying kneading thing that many cats do with their paws, and he showed no interest in messing with computer keyboards. I miss him a lot
I have never owned a cat since, since he died when I was 19, and I have always been on the move since, and there has been a concern about how I would take care of a cat, and a sense I could never find one like him, but recently i have decided I want to get a cat.
He was a traditional siamese of the “Applehead” variety rather than what I find to be the strange looking “modern Siamese” cats with their oddly elongated features. These are now called Thai Cats at competitions to distinguish them from the Siamese breed. He was a seal point or chocolate point rather than silver point, with dark brown ears, nose, tail and paws, and a coat that was light when he was a young kitten but then developed darker areas after he was chilled, as happens with cats of that breed.
