zeus...

zeus (10 years old - 4 of 9 lives remaining)

don't start - I know it's a cat, and cats are not guy things, dogs are guy animals; cats are most often associated with females, though god knows why - I mean really, who can fathom why women love cats - cats are independent, they don't listen, they don't come in when you call, they like to stay out all night, come home and expect to be fed and stroked, then want to be left alone and sleep - in other words, every quality that women hate in a man, they love in a cat...
from a male standpoint however, the physical skills of a cat can be appreciated; their speed, strength, eyesight, hearing, tree-climbing ability, indiscriminate and random sexual prowness, primal killer-instinct, and ever-present attitude...
so why write about this particular cat??? well, this is an unusual cat, very cool, very large (about 25#'s), a real hunter and gopher-killer extraordinaire, makes very little noise, is somewhat trainable, at least to a relative degree that any tomcat is trainable, an excellent listener, and he happens to live here...
we have millions of gophers out here and even with his remarkable skills, he will never catch up, let alone make a dent in the overall population, yet he continues to try - and he actually eats the whole gopher (after an appropriate period of playful rodent torture) with the exception of the liver - bites off the head first, and then feasts on the rest, crunching away, usually right outside the dining room window, right about dinnertime, which, of course, adds to the ambiance of the humans dining experience...
he is also generally self-supporting, meaning he can be left for the weekend outside, and will fend for himself - this is an improvement over other pets or small children, which have to be either provided for or taken with you when you travel...
however, he can also be incredibly lazy, eating and sleeping all day, after assumedly partying all night...
which brings up an old polish proverb:
dogs have owners; cats have staff...