by Daniel Coffman

Created on: September 02, 2008

I'm not sure if Stripe qualified as a "Delinquent Pet", but life with that big cat was never dull.

Like almost all the cats I've ever been owned by in my 38 years, Stripe came to us as a stray. I lived with my parents in a little Pennsylvania town in what people usually refer to as "the sticks". As a result, those unsavory types who are looking to unload unwanted pets often dropped them off in our neighborhood. Most of them were either sick or pregnant at the time, to boot. My parents would try to find good homes for these strays, often keeping one out of every few, either because the cat or dog caught our fancy, or was too sickly or pregnant to be desirable to anyone. I have a soft spot for the outcasts: runts, three-legged, missing a tail or an eye, Id take them all in.

Stripe was one of the runts, the smallest of four kittens born to a pregnant mommy cat some insensitive jerk dropped out of a moving car. The other three, and their mother, found homes among the local farms and families, but Stripe, named for the single white line running down the bridge of his nose, looked so frail that most people didn't give him a year, my parents included.

He proved them all wrong.

Like two of his three siblings, Stripe's coloring consisted of a white tummy and paws over an odd shiny, blue-gray short fur that none of us recognized. Although nobody in my immediate family was an expert on cat breeds, most of them are easily recognizable; not so with Stripe and his siblings. For years afterward, I assumed he was some mixture of Russian Blue. Later I would discover the Chartreux breed and realize it fit him perfectly. Like all my pets, he was a mix, a mutt, but all the more beautiful for it.

Despite his humble beginnings, Stripe grew into a beast. I never weighed him, mainly because he hated to be held off the ground, but I estimate he tipped the scales near the twelve pound mark. None of that was fat. Stripe was a dense ball of muscle, broad-shouldered and long for a cat. He was never declawed, nor was he ever defeated in the numerous scuffles he got into. All the neighborhood cats, and most dogs, lived in awe of him.

Almost all cats are aloof, solitary creatures who go their own way and do what pleases them. If that happens to accidentally coincide with what you want, then so be it. Stripe's picture could have appeared alongside the dictionary definition of "aloof". He was an outside cat, something I've come to dislike in other pet owners, but which seemed normal living out in

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