Taz the Cat
This is Taz, one of the stray cats that lives in the area. I call him Taz because that’s his name. Taz has a certain swagger, a knowing that he is the alpha male cat of the neighborhood. Other cats move to the side when Taz walks by, and small children walk around him. His coat always looks like he’s been rolling in dirt. His gaze can be somewhat intimidating. Sometimes when he appears, I can almost hear the ominous sound of French horns from Peter and the Wolf.
When Wilson and I were becoming friends, Taz would sit in the distance watching my every move. Each time I attempted to share some food with him, he would run away. I would leave the food in the area that he had been at and he would return to eat after I walked away.
Eventually he stopped running. A short while after that, he began to appear whenever Wilson was being fed, gradually moving closer with time. Now when I dish out the food, it is Taz that meows and rubs tenderly against my shins. While his coat is always dirty, it is a beautiful coat. His hair is long, and its softness is like the hair of an infant child. He doesn’t particularly like to be petted and he lets me know this with a quick turn of his head. But he allows me a couple of strokes in our exchange. Taz isn’t so tough, he’s a pussycat.