Also, I do not think that he would travel well, so potential adopters in places in Texas just won’t do. I’m hoping to find him a home in the Greater Washington DC area of Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, DC. That covers a lot of territory, so, hopefully, someone out there would like to adopt Topaz.

I sent a more detailed response to someone else that I will share with you below because this response has more background information that you may find useful:

Emails are not the best way to communicate because they are so brief, so please allow me to go into more detail. I did not rescue Topaz last week when I sent the email to ARL (The Abyssinian Rescue League). I actually rescued him in November just before the holiday season started, so there has been ample opportunity for an owner to step forward to claim him, but that has not happened.

I have over 20 years of experience in animal rescue. As soon as I rescued him, I took him to my vet immediately to have him checked for a microchip and to do an exam and basic tests and shots. There was no chip. I also filed “found pet” reports and checked local shelters, vets, rescue groups for reports of missing Abys, canvassed the neighborhood for missing cat flyers, checked nearby apartment/condo buildings for reports of lost pets, checked the newspapers, pet blogs, Craigslist for lost pet notices, etc. I have done all the steps to locate an owner several times, but no one has claimed him. It is sad for any pet to be abandoned, especially such an unusual animal as Topaz. Unfortunately, though, as we animal rescuers know all too well, some people do abandon pets. When it is time to move, they leave the pet behind and then get a new pet at their new destination. I privately refer to such people as serial pet killers.

There are plenty of purebred pets on death row in animal shelters who can attest to the fact that even purebreds get abandoned. I, too, am amazed that this exceptional little fellow was dumped on the street, but that seems to be what happened. I could not believe what my eyes were seeing when I first spotted him slinking down the sidewalk in front of the mall! Even from a distance, I could immediately tell that he was either a purebred Aby or Oriental Shorthair who had no business being on the street!

The only other possibility that has occurred to me is that perhaps his owner died, and no surviving relative wanted that cat, so he was dumped. Unfortunately, that happens too. Based on reports from shopkeepers at the shopping mall where I found him, he was out there for about two weeks. One of the shop clerks left food for him. That is probably the only reason that he survived until I spotted him. It was pure chance that I was driving by at the right time and spotted him. What are the odds that an animal rescuer would drive by at just the right time — especially an animal rescuer who planned to go trapping that night to rescue a different cat, so food bait and a trap were on hand. After he got friendly with me, I just picked him up and popped him into the trap and took him to the vet. I seem to have my own “Thanksgiving” tradition of rescuing an animal from the street in November.

No one has filed a report of a missing pet Aby, no one has checked with local shelters about a lost Aby, etc. Some people go away for the holidays and the pet escapes while the in the care of the pet sitter, but there has been plenty of time for the owner to return from the holidays and reclaim, but that has not happened. Sometimes an owner has an accident or becomes ill and is hospitalized for a few weeks. Plenty of time has elapsed for an owner who was temporarily incapacitated to reclaim him, but no one has claimed him. During this waiting period, though, some good things have happened. His pawpads have healed (living on the street chapped his pads), he has gained weight, and now he is in good condition now for rehoming. I did not want to place him during the holidays any way since that is a bad time for pets to be adopted, so I wanted to wait until the New Year before mounting a full-scale effort for adoption.

This was a one-day CFA show, 6 rings, so I thought of it as a practice trial run sort of thing, work the kinks out of my prep work, see how things go, what I might have to work on with one or the other of them. The other one is a Somali I am agent for (and temporary home for him) for a friend of mine, the same one that co-owns Jaxx with Jennifer and me.

The first problem is I am so very clueless about grooming longhaired cats. I did my best, I went in the tub with him and thoroughly shampooed him twice and rinsed him thoroughly twice and used a blow dryer to get him fluffy dry. Thinking to myself, I really like the shorthaired Aby coat SO MUCH MORE, it’s wash and wear, it stays where it’s put and blow drying would just mess things up. And why did I say yes to this, and I surely hope I did it right. Then went about packing up to leave the hotel room and get to the show.

The judges were unanimous. I am abysmal* at grooming a longhaired cat!! I tried, and I promised I would do better next time every time I got called out about it, but I still got the comments from the judges about it, and felt like a bad mommy. Poor Shane. But he did get a 2nd Best Longhair Champion, which was quite an accomplishment since there were 32 Longhaired Champions. I am never showing a longhaired cat again after this. I would only have done it for a friend. I told her about it and we laughed at my ineptitude and I was grateful she didn’t hold it against me. It’s why I do things for her, she’s a nice person.

On to Jaxx. I wasn’t sure if I even wanted to show him this time around. He’s been growing, and he’s a big cat now at 9 lbs. I like that!! But I thought he might be a tad overweight from the food I had him on, and had changed his food only last week. So I seriously considered pulling him from the show. But I figured I would give him a chance and take it one ring at a time. The first few rings were fine. Jaxx doesn’t hate showing but he takes a while to get into it, to start enjoying it. Another reason for a trial run at a smaller show first before going on to a bigger one.

Then Jaxx got called to a final. For a moment I thought I was hearing things. What? Really? I took so long to clue in that they started threatening to replace the number, so I hurried over there with him and apologized for taking too long. And sat there and watched Jaxx get an 8th Best Specialty Cat finals ribbon. Wow, maybe this would work out after all. If I could get him to all six rings, supposedly he would become a CFA Champion at that point. I’m still figuring out the CFA system, which I find terribly confusing!!

It took a long time to figure out how many points he had toward a Grand Championship, I think it was 14.3 which is still quite confusing if you ask me. 90%, 80%, etc. on down, of the cats you just won against, which you have to figure out from the poor master clerk who is also trying to mark down the finals correctly from all six of the ring clerks. I may not have gotten it right, but we’ll see, I guess.

On to a few more rings, and with the only Abyssinian and only Somali there at this small show, they both got four ribbons in each ring, I think they were Best Ruddy Male, Best Ruddy, Best of Breed, and Best
Champion of Breed, if I got it right. How many points and all is another different calculation which I didn’t even try to figure out. I was already quite confused! If I could get them through six rings, they would be Champions, that was simple enough for me! LOL!

Then toward the late afternoon, Jaxx got called back to Ring 5. Here we must backtrack to a most amazing thing that Jaxx did. He was being judged by this nice lady and he got a wild look in his eye and leapt
over the spectators onto the floor about 8 feet in one jump and took off running for all he was worth toward the open door to the show hall a few yards away. At the same time, the judge took off running after him, and I took off running down the next aisle to do an end run around him and get between him and the door, which other people were hurrying toward also to close it. My friend and vet mentor headed down the aisle too, for a coordinated 3-point team to catch Jaxx as fast as we could. I got around between Jaxx and the door, a feat I don’t think I could have accomplished if it weren’t for the relatively slippery tile floor (as opposed to carpet) that Jaxx had to deal with and my serious adrenaline rush! Jaxx saw me and started back the way he came, in one of those cartoon-like running-backwards sort of turnarounds. Then he saw the judge who was hot on his trail, and did another turnaround, sliding around with an amazing amount of grace the whole time. Meanwhile, people are shouting “CAT OUT!!” and “CLOSE THE DOOR!!” all around us. Jaxx looks at me and the judge and goes off in a completely different direction, this time toward the row of show cages the cats were all in (the ones not in the rings, anyway). Each double row of show benches has the show cages and then there is an aisle between each of them. My vet friend was waiting in the other aisle. We all knew this routine very well from previous encounters with escaped cats. We hadn’t practiced it together before but we knew it so well that each of us took just the right place to head him off.

Most cats, when in Jaxx’s situation, would run under the tables and run around hiding and playing hide and seek til somebody could figure out which table they were under and the owner could catch them. But not Jaxx, oh no!! He leapt OVER the top of the show cages in two huge bounds of muscular athleticism into the other aisle!!

Where my vet friend was waiting for him. He slid to a stop, defeated for the moment. Then he looked up and saw a show cage, which to him usually means he gets to take a well deserved rest from all of that moving around into and out of cages and being messed around with by all those strange people he doesn’t know (the judges). So he jumped inside the show cage. My friend zipped it up immediately afterward and declared, “It’s not his cage, but he’s caught.” Which he definitely was. I had also done another fast turnaround and had come around the other end (I can’t leap over things quite like Jaxx can!!) and ran down the aisle, thanked her, unzipped the cage, grabbed Jaxx and, breathing rather heavily by now, walked back over to the judging ring.

The judge had been watching all of this at close range and at my inquiring look, said “You can put him back in his cage.” Which I did rather gratefully. He gained the nickname of “Houdini” proclaimed by the ring clerk who had also been watching all of this while yelling “CLOSE THE DOOR” into the microphone, but if you ask me it wasn’t so much a trick as a rather extraordinary bout of athleticism and trapeze artistry.

So when he was called back into her ring for a final, I didn’t know what to think. I guessed she thought he was nice, and well, he is nice, several of us had gotten together to find the nicest Russian Aby from someone we could trust and got him over here, so of course we think he’s nice too….But how nice? There were 50 Championship cats at the show, including some very very nice ones that were being campaigned, too. And would Jaxx’s escape trick count for or against him or not matter at all?

So I waited as she kept picking other cats as she made her (confusing still, I must admit!!) way up the ladder from 10th (or something-th?) up to Best Cat and Jaxx still wasn’t chosen. I think my eyebrows went
pretty far up when we got to 5th Best and she still hadn’t chosen him. Wow, in the top four?? And another, then another, then finally only two left. And at that point she picked Jaxx to be Best Shorthair Champion and 2nd Best Allbreed Cat. Wow!!! I was told that Grand Champions make it into the finals and an Open (Novice, first show as an adult) cat didn’t have much of a chance at a final, much less a high number like 2nd Best. I was dumbfounded and silly-happy all at once.

And I had enough wits about me to make a video of Jaxx being shown by the judge, explaining what she liked about him and why she picked him as her Best Shorthair Cat (and by extension, and something she did a
couple of minutes later), her 2nd Best Allbreed Cat. (I still don’t get that part, Jaxx has three ribbons from two rings, it’s very confusing. But I’m not complaining!!!)

I wish I had a video of Jaxx making that amazing escape, but unfortunately I was in the middle of thwarting him!! You’ll just have to imagine that part. And that is why I am so sleepless over here after driving back four hours and not getting much sleep the night before either after driving four hours to get there.

The Coffin of The She-Cat of Crown Prince Thutmose (“Thutmose V”)

Cairo CG 5003, JE 30172

Crown Prince Thutmose, the eldest son of Amenhotep III, had this coffin duly prepared for his pet cat upon her death. Her name was apparently “TA-miAt”, meaning “The Cat (feminine).”

Prince Thutmose’s sentiment for The She-Cat is evidenced by the series of supplications by various deities to care for the animal in the afterlife, but the initial opening lines of the inscription appear to acknowledge the cat’s justification and eventual deification in the afterlife was a given, just as with human deceased.