You know him as Rags the Klepto Cat. But to us he’s just Smokey, my mother’s beloved big-boy cat. He’s half Ragdoll and half no-one-knows. He has a mind of his own and he brings my mother a lot of joy and worry. You see, she wanted a lovely lap cat to wile her days away. But what she got was an active guy who insists on exploring the world beyond Mama’s nice home. She wanted him to be an inside cat, but he had other ideas. He’s more headstrong than my mother is and he got his way, so he has two kitty doors and usually a human door-opener standing by who will buy into his whim to be outside or back inside.
He’s also a lap cat. Nearly every day—once or twice—he’ll leap up into Mama’s lap and flop over for a cuddle. No, he doesn’t curl up—he flops and sprawls. I guess that’s his ragdoll heritage.
Mama insists on feeding him canned food to supplement his constant flow of kibbles. But
she worries a lot because he doesn’t eat much. It could be that he eats enough kibbles throughout the day to satisfy him. Or he’s being fed something he likes better than Fancy Feast as he adventures through the neighborhood each day. Or it could be that he fills up on treats and isn’t hungry come meal time. He gets a lot of visitors and herds each one toward where the treats are kept, then rubs against us with affection. Not one of us can resist him. So, yes, he gets probably more treats than he should.
Smokey is a cool cat, but he has bursts of energy and will let us see him play like a kitten occasionally. One of his favorite things to do is to pull his toy basket off the shelf and dump it. Then he goes to his hanging toy and bats it around a few times. As soon as playtime begins, it’s over. But then Smokey is almost 8 years old.
My mother gets a kick out of reading some of Rags’s escapades and she can just imagine Smokey doing some of that stuff. She likes that I patterned Rags loosely around Smokey. But he doesn’t seem to be impressed with my representation of him. In fact some of Rags’s actions and activities go strictly against Smokey’s grain. He does not like car rides, for example and he does not carry things around in his mouth, which is why Rags is actually a blend of cats. Rags looks like Smokey and has that confident air about him that Smokey has and sense of adventure, but some of the other aspects of Rags are taken from other cats I know
or have known.
Our sweet kitty, Lily, for example, carries things around in her mouth—brings me her toys, my slipper socks, etc. My daughter has had more than one cat who love riding in cars. It seems that when creating a cat character for a series it takes a village of cats—a colony. However, some of the other cats in the Klepto Cat Mysteries are nearly exact replicas of cats I’ve known.
If you would like to learn more about Rags, you must read my latest in the Klepto Cat Mystery series, Meowmoirs of a Klepto Cat. Order your print or Kindle copies here
