He was full grown when he showed up, and obviously had been cared for. He was a handsome tiger stripe, and as it turned out, a gentleman. I started feeding him scraps (not the best diet for a cat), and so he started hanging around my place. Dr. B said he should be called Hassan, which means Handsome in Arabic, so that's what we called him. He seldom came in the house, but he was always around when it came to dinnertime.
Then, one evening we heard the gol-dangdest yowling outside. A baby cat, a baby cat with the loudest yowl and the biggest mouth I've ever heard or seen. He couldn't have been much more than just weaned. Such noise! and such volumn! from that little ball of fluff. Why he came to our house is a mystery, but of course, we couldn't turn him away. Hassan had already taken up residence, so there was the possibility that he might take umbrage at our adoption of another cat. But, gentleman that he was, he tolerated the newcomer.
The new cat became McGillicuddy. Where my husband picked up that name, I don't know, but the kitten became McGillicuddy, and he became bossier and noisier as he grew. Even as a little squirt, he would muscle in on Hassan's bowl, even though he had a bowl of his own. Finally, we put Hassan's bowl on top of the extension outside the bathroom, and Mac couldn't jump up that high yet.
Oh, yes, Mac was also a tiger stripe. Turned out to be a good looking fella, too. But that yowl....!!! The boys finally came to some kind of agreement, and if not good friends, at least tolerant of each other.
As it turned out Hassan elected me as his servant, and MacGillicuddy latched on, literally, to my husband. While Stan was sitting at the table reading or studying or whatever, Mac would claw his way up and up, no matter if it was cloth or bare skin he was climbing, and finally drape himself around Stan's shoulders. And purr. The purr was almost as loud as the yowl. Stan finally had to put a towel around his neck and shoulders to protect himself from Mac's claws.
Mac came to a very sad ending. He wandered out to the highway and got hit by a car. I cried for a couple days, and I think Husband missed his fur collar for awhile.
Hassan stuck around, and when we finally moved into town, Dr B said he would keep Hassan. But the move to town is a ways off yet.
Shalom