Happy Tail: Alecto
There are spicy cats. And then there is Alecto, named for one of the so-called “three furies” from Greek mythology and colloquially known as “the goddess of boundless rage.”
That probably sounds kind of intimidating. Yet luckily for Alecto — who, we will discover, is as beguiling and she is occasionally baffling — she landed with Alex, a highly experienced, hugely patient foster who saw her many behavioural… uh… quirks as challenges to be met, considered, and managed. So much so, in fact, that Alecto became Alex’s first and only foster “fail” after 11 smooth, previous foster-to-adoption handovers.
“Between fosters, various roommates’ cats, and my own previous cats, I’ve lived with around 30 cats,’ Alex says, “and Alecto is by far the most unique.”
How unique? With Alex’s help, let us count the ways:
“For about a year-and-a-half, she was obsessed with the drain strainer. Every night, as soon as I turned the light off, she would get up from the bed and go into the washroom. I’d hear a clink as she got the strainer out of the sink and put it in the bathtub. Then she would come back to bed. One day, she stopped doing that and never did it again.”
“Alecto used to play a game where she attacked me through the shower curtain. My shower curtain has hundreds of tiny holes from her teeth and claws! I would get an oven mitt and lightly stroke the curtain for her to attack. She would let me know when she wanted to play by going and sitting in the tub and batting gently at the curtain.”
“She likes to steal things and make collections. We have two shared interests: earplugs and ChapStick. I like having them and she enjoys playing with — and stashing — them. I had a poster on my fridge that kept getting messed up. She had been stashing earplug behind it. I was going through kind of a rough time last winter, and she started leaving things for me on my pillow, usually an earplug or a ChapStick. I have no idea how she got that up there. But it was clear she knew those were things that I loved.”
Kooky right? But as Alex explains, among Alecto’s many attributes is an enormous capacity for love. “She is super-affectionate and loves being close to me,” he says. “She sleeps with me every night. She likes to perch on my lap, put a paw on each of my shoulders and lean her face against mine. And honestly,” Alex laughs, “she cracks me up every single day.”
Clues to Alecto’s eccentricities may be found in her early life. Trapped in late 2021 by superstar ACR trapper Rosary, Alecto — then named Missy, later changed to Jenny — came from a large colony at Jane and Wilson.
“There was a senior homeowner who was a kind of old-school character,” Rosary recalls. “His backyard was incredible. Imagine an orderly junkyard with winding pathways and sheds. He collected everything: birdcages, rebar, concrete blocks, wood, buckets. He had that farmer mentality: cats were not fixed, he fed strays, they had their litters all over his property. He’d hand you a kitten if you looked at it.”
She continues: “This led to a big colony that mostly lived in what I would call a ditch alongside his home. This ditch bordered an apartment building parking lot so the cats would come up and eat because a woman at the apartment would feed them. People would throw their leftover chicken rotis into the ditch.”
Rosary briefly assessed Missy/Jenny, where she also observed some of the behavioural eccentricities — which Rosary characterizes as “a bit Jekyll and Hyde” — that would become the pretty, little black cat’s hallmarks.
“But I think she found the very best home with a person who appreciates her personality,” Rosary confirms. “It’s what I love most about Annex Cat Rescue: very special fosters and very special adopters.”
Missy/Jenny landed with Alex as a foster in January 2022 and while he admits it took about 10 months for the cat to make demonstrable socialization progress — something he says was greatly aided by ACR’s tireless foster team — she finally came around. Alex adopted her in May 2023, renaming her Alecto for all the beforementioned reasons.
“She was so bonded to me, and I was concerned that she wouldn’t bond to other people,” Alex says, adding that she is still very shy with strangers; only one of his friends “has even glimpsed her. But more than that, she is the weirdest cat I have ever met,” Alex laughs. “She is so funny. I just really enjoy her unusual personality. And these days, she seems very happy to be indoors.”
-Kim Hughes
