The Imposter Roz

Copyright Catherine Coyle Murphy 2012

Submitted to Leader Publications July 2012

By Catherine Coyle Murphy

For the Leader

You know you have too many pets when you discover that a strange animal has been living in your house for who knows how long, and no one even notices.  Of course it helps, the animal that is, if it happens to look a lot like one of your own pets. This odd situation occurred at our home some years ago.

One morning, our daughter went to open the kitchen door to let out our cat, Roz.

To quote our daughter, “As Roz was going out the door, Roz was also coming in the door.”

When she inspected the cat she had just let in, she realized the cat that had been in the house wanting out was not our cat, it just looked a lot like her.

That night, the interloper reappeared and my husband brought him in for all to see.

To make the whole situation even stranger, our cat Roz was a bit unusual looking. She was a Maine-coon/Persian/alley cat mix. She had ash-gray fur, which upon close inspection the gray could be seen mottled with a cream color. She had the hugely fluffy tail of a Persian and she grew a ruff around her neck each winter like a Maine-coon. Roz had gold eyes.

The other cat, which we have since referred to as the imposter Roz, had the same shade of gray and was just as fluffy as our Roz, but he did not have the cream color mixed in. He had emerald green eyes.  He was also was lot larger than Roz.  But who notices such details when you’re just opening a door to let a cat in or out, or when a cat is at its food bowl?

Actually, the discovery explained a few things. I remember before the imposter was discovered, my girls once expressed concern because Roz was gaining too much weight. “We need to put her on a diet,” they told me.

Some time later, they the girls were concerned Roz was quite sick because she seemingly lost a lot of weight rather quickly.  “We need to get her to the vet,” they pestered. 

We now know the assumed difference in weight was caused by the fact that sometimes the imposter Roz slept with the girls, other times the real Roz did.

Our youngest son said he always wondered why sometimes Roz felt light and soft when she slept with him, while other times she seemed strong and heavy.  The girls also noticed that sometimes Roz purred softly, and other times she had a really loud purr.

The discovery also helped us realize that our female cats were not the ones wetting on the dirty laundry pile in the basement after all. The imposter Roz, an un-neutered male, had been spraying the clothes.

The only member in our household who did notice the strange cat, we came to realize, was our dog.  We always wondered why Duke would only chase after Roz when she entered the house and never the other cats.   He probably was only chasing the imposter Roz, but we really didn’t pay attention if he seemed to chase after her only some of the time.

The imposter Roz had made himself pretty much at home. He knew to sit on the shelf outside the kitchen window and meow to be let in.  Aside from being chased when he first entered the house, he otherwise ignored the dog just like our other cats did.  He knew where the food bowls were, as well as the bedrooms and basement.

I think my husband must have been pretty relieved at the discovery of the imposter.

Just a few weeks before the finding, he was at the stove about to prepare breakfast when Roz meowed to go out.  He went to let her out and returned to the stove.  Within seconds, Roz was again meowing to go out.

My husband was just beside himself trying to figure out how the cat got in again so quickly.  The poor guy must have thought he was going nuts.

After a few weeks of diligent checking when Roz was let in or out, we all fell out of the habit.

The imposter continued to sneak in undetected.  We knew so because he continued to leave his tell-tail sign – I mean –  markings, on the laundry pile in the basement.