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This is a big, loveable bear of a cat. He first began to appear at
the evening feedings in the winter of 2001. We suspected from the start
that he was a stray, rather than feral, because he was, at that time,
too big and well fed-looking to have been born and grown up outside. He
was quite aggressive as a tomcat, and not long after he first turned up,
all the other feral tomcats (including volya)
became very scarce.
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So aggressive that he was a problem. I had to chase him away from my
back door with a broom one night. He tried to bite
April. He'd get into fights with my indoor cats through the
windows at night. Plans to trap him and have him neutered (and
hopefully mellowed out) in the summer of 2001 were put on hold when I
became unemployed. However, come September 13, 2001, something had to
be done, and Mr. Tuxedo walked into the trap.
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After his trip to the vet, I held him
in my holding cage for a few days, to let him recover, and to try and
find a shelter or foster home that would take him. Without success. On
the fifth day, I opened the cage to let him go. By that time he didn't
want to leave. He finally did, but when he came back after that he was
a changed cat. April decided to take him in,
and about a week after being released I opened the door of the cage,
gave him a slight nudge, and he walked right back in.
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What had been a huge cat, when he first showed up, was pretty
bedraggled six months later. The hard life outside had taken it's
toll. Tennessee had severe gastro-intestinal problems, caused by
bad diet, worms, and infection. He was not entirely cleared up until
well into January of the following year. This picture was taken
during the unsuccessful attempt to have him live at
April's apartment, during November and
December of 2001. You can see how skinny he is, compared to the other
pictures here.
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Tennessee, by the way, is named after a
famous celebrity,
due to my misunderstanding as to what constitutes 'tuxedo'
coloration in a cat. For a proper interpretation of a 'tuxedo'
color scheme, see Saki.
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Tennesse (or TN) is very much a people cat. He must have been very
unhappy as a stray. He's an ultimate lap cat. Here he protects me
against a sudden failure of Earth's gravitational field.
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And here he does the same for April.
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This is my desk... and possibly one reason I don't get more done.
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