A few days ago I saw a wild Bobcat. That’s not unusual. I live in a very small, rural town in Louisiana & wild animal sightings on the roads and highways is quite common.

What made this sighting a little different from others is the Bobcat was crossing a bridge. Once again, probably not all that unusual but, the bobcat was running on top of the bridges guardrail. To me, this was unusual. I’ve never before seen a wild animal with enough sense to stay out of traffic while it was crossing a bridge. This unusual act by the bobcat reminded me of an unusual cat that I used to have when I was still a teenager over 30 years ago.

Back when I was 18 years old, Pat, a friend of mine and I had rented an apartment together. Late one evening Pat and Cathy (another friend) brought home this scrawny, half grown, half starved ally kitten. We didn’t have anything that we could feed the kitten, so we all went to the closest open store we could find, which was a convenience store. The convenience store had no milk or cat food, but it did have canned tuna. We bought two cans of tuna & went home to feed the kitten. The kitten wolfed down the first can of tuna, so we opened the second can. He ate the whole second can of tuna as well So we named him Glutton puss because the combined weight of the two cans of tuna weighed more than the kitten.

Glutton puss was an unusual cat. He was solid white, had a bobtail, baby blue eyes and he grew up to weigh 25 pounds. Now Glutton puss was never fat. He just didn’t stop growing until he was a very large cat. It wasn’t until several years later that I found out that Glutton puss was a Manx.

Most of what I’ve read about the Manx cat breed was also true about Glutton puss.

Here are a few things about Glutton puss that made him different from most house cats.

Glutton puss never got Fleas or Ticks; I think it was because his fur was so thick. His fur was short, but it was so thick that you couldn’t get to the skin under the fur.

He loved to ride in my car; I had an old 1966 Plymouth Fury at the time & Glutton puss would hop up onto the rear dash, then he would lay down and watch the people in the other cars on the highway. This brought some strange looks when those people (especially children) realized that Glutton puss was a real cat.

Glutton puss loved Rock & Roll music; He would lie down between the speakers & fall asleep. If someone were to turn off the stereo, Glutton puss would jump up and start rubbing against their legs until they turned the music back on.

Glutton puss was an unusual hunter as well; Glutton puss didn’t catch mice like other cats do. Instead, he would catch ground moles. I still don’t know how he caught them. He just did.

Glutton puss liked to ride in a boat too; One time I stayed with a friend on a houseboat for about two weeks. The houseboat was anchored about 100 yards out in the river and the only way to get to it was in my friends Johnboat (a very small boat). In the evenings when I came home from work, Glutton puss would hop right on the little Johnboat and ride with us out to the houseboat. In the mornings, he would be in the Johnboat, waiting for a ride back to land.

Glutton puss was an indoor/outdoor cat; this by itself may not be unusual. Lots of cats are indoor/outdoor cats, but most cats will let you know when they are ready to go in or out. Not Glutton puss. He would be laying somewhere near the door just waiting patiently for someone to open it, then he would just go through it.

Glutton puss knew how to defend himself and his territory; now don’t get me wrong. I have never condoned any kind of cruelty to animals. But I have no control of other people’s animals. I only saw Glutton puss in two fights.

The first fight was when Pat and I moved to a different house. This house was a very old house and it had a broken windowpane on the front porch. We didn’t know that there was a stray cat living in the house when we moved in.

We heard a cat growling at about 1:00 am on our first night in the house. Pat and I came out of our bedrooms to see what Glutton puss was growling at. When I turned on the kitchen light we saw Glutton puss sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor. There was a big gray cat against the wall with it’s back arched and it was the one we heard growling. The other cat started looking around for a way to get away, so Glutton puss calmly walked over to the other cat, swatted it once, then calmly walked back to the middle of the kitchen, sat down & started purring. After a few more swats, Glutton puss did let the other cat get away. It left in such a hurry that it went through the wrong windowpane, breaking it. The other cat never returned.

I saw the second fight when I came home from work one day. As I was pulling into the driveway I saw Glutton puss being chased by a Dalmatian. The Dalmatian was about to catch Glutton puss but when Glutton puss did a beautiful jumping pirouette & while he was still in the air, he raked the claws on all four of his paws across the dogs nose. The Dalmatian began yelping & immediately stopped chasing Glutton puss. Glutton puss kept going. The next day I saw the Dalmatian, down on the ground stalking Glutton puss while Glutton puss was sleeping in the yard. When the Dalmatian got about ten feet away, Glutton simply raised his head and looked at the Dalmatian. The dog stopped dead in his tracks, stopped his stalking behavior, stood up and walked away.

It was my fault when Glutton puss disappeared. I had parted ways with Pat and I took Glutton puss with me when I moved into an apartment on the other side of town. I had been at the new place about two years when the landlord decided that the tenants would no longer be allowed to have any pets larger than his Pekingese. The landlord said I had to get rid of Glutton puss or be evicted imedeatetly.

My parents said they would take care of Glutton puss till I could find a new apartment. I shouldn’t have left Glutton with them but I really didn’t have any choice. Glutton puss wandered off a few days later. Neither of my parents or their neighbors had seen Glutton and because my parents lived out in the country we figured Glutton had probably been killed by wild animals.

About a year later I heard about a man living about five miles away from my parents house and I was told he had a large bobtailed white cat that had wandered up to his house, so he took the cat in. I went to see if the cat was Glutton puss, but I was too late. The guy had moved to Alaska a month earlier & had taken the cat with him.

I believe Glutton puss probably liked Alaska.

Do they have ground moles in Alaska?