Duke

A half-chausie black grizzled ticked tabby tom with blue-green eyes

Duke is a very, very large black grizzled ticked tabby with blue-green eyes. He’s half-Chausie through his sire Roy, and Duke greatly takes after Roy in size and appearance. His fur is mid-length and dense. At first glance, it might appear that its hairs are silver-tipped, but the very tips are actually black. The hair shafts are lighter in color at his skin, but have alternating off-white bands in the middle. There’s a locket of white fur on his chest. It’s sometimes obscured under the rest of his fur, but Duke thinks the locket’s shape resembles a winged creature in flight, and it reminds him of his mother.

Tabby markings can be made out on his face, legs, and tail when light strikes his coat, and the fur along his spine is the darkest black. His eyes are oval-shaped and his large ears are lightly tufted. He’s tall, deep-chested, and supple with a long stride, medium-sized paws, and a tapered tail. His nose pad is solid black, but his paw pads are black with a rosy tone.

Duke keeps to himself and tends to be sullen. He’s become used to a solitary life and doesn’t trust others easily. To protect himself, Duke tries not to get attached. Life tends to be short for street cats, so he doesn’t expect to have the luxury of dying old. He takes things as they come and rarely plans ahead. He’s usually quiet and soft-spoken, but he’s not afraid to get violent or let himself be driven by anger.

As a fighter, he has few qualms about crippling those who’ve threatened him. He’s been trained to fight strategically, but his first instinct is often just to overwhelm his opponent through size and strength. He’s an improvisor who’ll try to use whatever advantage he can to win. He can be reckless and rarely fears for his own safety in combat. However, he will fear for the safety of others, such as bystanders or weaker fighters.

He’s willing to eat housecat food as a last resort, if he finds the Twolegs that set it to be trustworthy. He always prefers real prey. Duke is uncomfortable around Twolegs and has no interest setting paw in their dwellings. Deep in his heart remains grief from losing his mother. He accepts that she’s gone and how foolish it is to believe that he could ever find her again, but he refuses to confront the part of himself that drives him to seek Twoleg settlements in hopes of learning her fate.

Duke is most active at night and likes being up high. He enjoys traversing roofs because they’re excellent vantage points and useful for evading Twolegs. He also hates dogs. Even if they’re tethered to a Twoleg, he won’t hesitate to show aggression towards them. He’ll try to drive them away or attack if they get too close.

• Born in the Moon of Cheetah's Flight (2018) 112
• Their mother named them Duke

Duke hails from a town south of Whitehart. He came into existence in the early autumn of 2018, following his mother Cyrene’s chance encounter with a Chausie named Roy. Cyrene wasn’t a small cat herself by any means, but Roy was the largest she’d ever seen.

Cyrene would later tell Duke that he didn’t have to fear all humans, but he shouldn’t blindly trust them. Cyrene once had housefolk, but they’d left her behind when they moved away. After that, she met Roy, but a life together with him was not to be. Roy told her he was of an important lineage called Catasterismi and he was only in town temporarily with his housefolk. He never managed to get away from them for very long and they had no desire to take Cyrene in. Roy and his housefolk were gone before Duke had even been born, and Duke would grow to resent them for it.

When Duke was a kit, he and Cyrene were living among a cluster of cats in a small wooded area around an old building that humans left alone. The cluster was informally led by its strongest cats, but who those strongest were could change when they fought for dominance. The cluster was bound more by location and personal bonds than by ancestry and ancient tradition. It was more common for cats to join up than for the group to have a steady number of kittens.

Twolegs brought food for them at times, but the cats generally looked after themselves. The cluster prized self-sufficiency and capability. Cyrene taught Duke to fend for himself, both in hunting and in fighting. She reminded him that he needed to be strategic and not let his size turn him into a basic brute. He tried to keep that in mind, but found himself more focused on hunting techniques. A cat could run from a fight, but not from their hunger, and Duke refused to live solely off of housecat food. It looked like droppings.

In late 2018, Cyrene and Duke went their separate ways, but it was not by choice. One day, Cyrene came under attack from a dog. Duke and others fought it with her as best he could, but Cyrene’s wounds were beyond what they could well treat on their own. One of the regular Twolegs left a cage with food in it. Cyrene had taught Duke that such cages were traps Twolegs set to catch cats.

Others in the group agreed that if someone went into one, there was a good chance that they would not come back. Young kittens, for example, never did. Therefore, many of the cats avoided the cages. It was easy to discern those who had been returned. They would always have a missing ear tip and toms would return clearly altered.

Cyrene accepted the risks and entered the trap willingly. She told Duke not to worry about her. Even if she didn’t come back, at least he wouldn’t have to see her die. She wanted Duke to leave and not look back, warning him against trying to fight whichever Twolegs came for her. She didn’t trust them not to hurt Duke if he attacked.

Duke, powerless to help his mother, obeyed her. Feeling guilt with every heartbeat, he watched from afar as they took her away. Duke waited and waited, but she was never returned. One cat postulated that she could’ve become a housecat like one of his taken friends had. The thought brought scant comfort to young Duke.

Cyrene being a housecat was better than her being dead, but Duke had never forgotten the hurt she’d tried to hide in her voice when she told him about her old housefolk and how they had abandoned her. He tried to search the town, but he never found her. He began to resent Roy and his Twolegs, believing that Cyrene would never have gotten hurt if they had just helped her.

Duke remained with the cluster for some time. As he grew, he realized his large size and demeanor could sometimes be enough to intimidate an enemy into avoiding a fight. Still, Duke wanted to be ready for whatever opponents might try him. He only felt ready when, after several moons of training, the toughest cats in the cluster deemed him so. Once he’d performed to their satisfaction, they ordered him to set off and find someplace new. In the back of his mind, Duke wondered if they saw him as a threat and would run him off if he didn’t leave on his own.

Over a year since Cyrene’s abduction, Duke’s now found himself roaming near Whitehart. The term “kittypet” has entered his vocabulary. The town itself has caught his attention, but so too has the wild area by the river and greater forest. He has no interest in the Twoleg area across the river, but he thinks the seemingly untouched space on the eastern side could make a good base.

In late spring 2020 (21 First Fishing), he met a cat named Ahryndae in Whitehart (or near enough to it). She claimed to be a princess of a place called Camelot, but Duke was thoroughly unimpressed by her and figured her demeanor would get her into trouble someday. More recently, in late summer 2020 (13 Lion’s Glory), he met another stray, Kosmo. To Duke, he seemed to have much more sense than the princess.

• Gossamer Moon in the Night (21FF'20)
• Kindred Severed Neverwhere (14TL'20)
• Shrouded Safe (13LG'20)

Duke’s bigger than Cyrene but smaller than Roy. Roy’s 23lb, Cyrene’s about 13lb. Duke’s around 17lb at best, 15in tall, and 19in long (minus his tail).