It's Toothless' Birthday (observed)!
10 years ago I met this really sweet black cat while I was walking around the neighborhood. I saw him pounce at a robin (he missed) and crouched down with my hand outstretched to see if he would come sniff me. He stared at me thinking for a couple of seconds, then ran in past my hand, paused briefly to rub his face on my knee, and continued closer to flop at my feet and roll over to show me his belly. After giving him some pets, I got up to continue my walk and he followed me (by walking in front of me) for half a block.
I met him frequently on my walks from then on. I always stopped to pet him and he always followed me. One time I met one of the humans he was living with at the time and was told his name was Toothless.
Seven years ago, there was a black cat walking across the window ledges outside my living room. It seemed to be having some trouble figuring out how to get down, so I went out to help and recognized Toothless. I helped him down and then he would not stop rubbing on my legs, so I sat down with him and he leaned on me to give himself a bath. After a while I walked in the direction of his home and he followed me until we were about a block away, then he took off on his own.
He visited me at my house with increasing regularity after that. Usually I would be out filling the the bird feeders and then turn around to find a cat trying to get my attention with a meow so low and quiet that I hadn't even registered the sound as a cat. I know better than to feed a cat who doesn't belong to you, so I never did that, but I would often give him fresh water because I worried about the possibility of him drinking our of contaminated puddles. and I always gave him plenty of love and pets.
Two years and 10 months ago Toothless showed up on my deck one morning and refused to leave. I could not get him to follow me to his house and he seemed lethargic and appeared to be on the low end of healthy weight for a cat. After about a month of him living on my deck, a post from his owner appeared on the neighborhood Facebook group saying she hadn't seen him in 3 weeks and asking if anyone had. It was the second of those posts within 3 months. My dad replied to the post telling her where he had been and for how long. You would think the response to that reply would have been "Thanks! We'll come get him," but it wasn't. The response was "Well as long as he's safe." We started feeding him that day. And a few weeks later he was allowed in the house for the first time. Legally and morally he became my cat that day, but his former owners didn't consider him so until another year later when they moved away.
In the July before Toothless decided he wanted to live with me, his former owner made a post on Facebook about him being 13 years old at the time. From that and some other tidbits of information we pulled out of her like teeth we estimate that he was born sometime in late June or early July of 2010. We decided to celebrate his birthday on July 1st which means he's 16 years old today.
I made him his own hat because Rocket decided to chew on the hat that I initially made for hem both to share, so that one's just Rocket's now. Where Rocket wanted to knock over and chew on his birthday hat, Toothless just wanted to "hug" and kick it.
The only good picture of Toothless and his hat that I got was the first that I took. The rest are all blurry except for the one below where he pushed it out of frame right as I was taking the picture.
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