Bob the Fencing Room Cat

Bob is the official fencing room cat of the Evangelista School. The first time I saw Bob it was from a distance, in the beginning always and only from a distance, down the street from where I live. He seemed like a boy cat, kind of wary and slinky, and I started calling him Bob, just to call him something. He may have had another name, but Bob was an easy name to remember.

At first, I thought Bob lived one street over from mine. He often came from that direction. But, by the way he was always sort of just wandering around, I began to suspect he, in fact, didn’t have a home. Most likely, he was a neighborhood cat, a stray, an abandoned cat without a family. Sometimes individuals with pets just leave them behind when they move away. A cruel thing to do, but a common fact these days for those who move around a lot.

One day, to my surprise, Bob showed up out of nowhere on my front porch. Up close I realized, even more to my surprise, Bob was a girl. It was the soft eyes and the tiny, polite cat voice that made me think so.  But the name Bob stuck. I had to explain to everyone who met Bob, “Bob’s a girl.” Students made a face. “Bob’s a girl?” People are too in love with names and tags. Bob was Bob.

Anyway, I started feeding Bob because she looked hungry. I already had two house cats, Bud and Sweetie, who are brother and sister, so I had plenty of cat food to share. Watching Bob as she roamed around the street, I soon found out that she was living under an old couch propped up on a flatbed trailer nearby. Not a bad place for warm summer days and nights, but not so good for keeping out the rain and cold in other less hospitable seasons. I liked Bob’s forthright personality, and decided to invite her to come and live with me as an indoor/outdoor cat. It took some convincing, like sleeping with Bob in my enclosed sun porch for a few weeks, to get her used to being in strange surroundings. But we worked things out, and Bob settled into her new home.

This was when Bob took on her role as the fencing room cat. Her nature, friendly and inquisitive, made her the perfect greeter for my students. Tail straight up with a curl at the end, head butts and rub-ups for everyone, Bob was also insistently ready for some serious petting. Occasionally under foot in the beginning, it didn’t take her long to figure out when it was time to retreat from the fencing strip.  Before long, when fencers came on guard, Bob would wander off slowly into my workroom for a well-deserved nap.

But the fencing room cat’s story doesn’t end there. Three years into Bob’s new life came still another surprise from Bob.  On an emergency visit to the pet hospital because the adventurous cat decided to acquire a large scrape on her neck jumping over a high wooden fence in my backyard, Bob was magically turned back into a boy. When the doctor finished examining Bob, he observed thoughtfully, “You know, I thought when I came in here I was going to be treating a female cat, but,” and here he paused, I think for effect, “Bob’s a boy.” “Bob’s a boy?” I said. “Really?” The vet replied, “Let me show you,” and he rolled Bob over like he was smoothing out pizza dough, and showed me. Bob without a doubt had boy parts. “Is it possible that Bob is a hermaphrodite?” I asked. After the vet stopped laughing, “he said, “It’s possible, but not likely.” So, Bob was once again a boy. And now it was official.

This turn of Bob’s personal events also explained his rather martial approach to the rest of the world. I found out early on that Bob, boy or girl, was not in any way tolerant of his own species. In fact, he was downright belligerent. Sometimes he’d come home late at night splattered with blood, and it wasn’t his blood. At other times, there would be cat hair sticking out of his mouth that did not match any hair on his body. Bob was, and is, a fighter. It wasn’t long before I noticed there were no foreign cats in my neighborhood. Bob was carving out his own empire. 

Bob also turned out to be a mighty hunter, bringing home all sorts of demised trophies to feast on--everything from mice to bats to unknown whatevers--which he proceeded to deposit and devour in the middle of the fencing room floor, his absolute safe place. When a cat brings food to your home, you know he’s bringing it to his home. Bob knows where he lives.

From abandoned cat on the street to a permanent fixture in my fencing studio, Bob has come a long way in his quest for a forever home. This is where Bob has chosen to put down his roots. He also brings a touch of relaxed hominess to my fencing room, which I believe adds greatly to the learning process of my students. Some fencers enjoy the sterile coldness of a gymnasium packed with buzzing, flashing scoring machines and screaming competitors. It is, I suppose, the way of the sport mind. But that has never been my way and never will be. I see fencing as a challenging life skill. I prefer clean fencing, a bit of Mozart playing in the background and, of course, my fencing room cat overseeing it all.