Roy

A huge black grizzled ticked tabby tom with gold eyes

Roy is a huge black grizzled ticked tabby Chausie with gold eyes. He weighs around 23lb. He’s microchipped, but to keep his short fur from being flattened, he rarely wears a collar. He allows his housefolk to dress him in a harness and tether themselves to accompany him on promenade. The matching harness and lead are black with a gold crown pattern.

Roy’s never had to worry about anything in his life. He has always been pampered by his housefolk and kept in luxurious comfort. He revels in touring and competing in shows like the rest of his family. He loves new challenges and new adventures, but he always expects to have his privileges available.

Roy only fully respects other cats of noted lineages like himself. He may feel pity or sympathy towards the less fortunate, but he has trouble emphasizing with those that he sees as beneath him.

• Born in the Moon of First Green (2017) 093
• Their housefolk named them Roy
• Registered as Catasterismi's Royal Penumbra

Roy was born to Chausie parents who were members of Catasterismi, a cattery specializing in their breed. His full name is Catasterismi’s Royal Penumbra. He was raised from the start to know his place in society. In the opinions of his parents, their parents, and so on and so forth, that place was very, very high.

Roy’s parents were grand champions. They were descended from long lines of such cats. Roy was to follow in their pawsteps as a multi-award-winning show cat and producer of heirs, as were his siblings. Roy’s parents taught them all to make themselves the most important cats in the room. To Roy’s family, their housefolk were both their providers and their retainers. They were very skilled at matchmaking and serving, but sometimes they could be oblivious to their cat’s true wishes and would require reminding.

Roy learned how to pose and appeal to spectators and judges alike. He was to charm them in all the right ways and outshine any and all competition. The humans who adopted him knew exactly that and how to serve him properly.

When he was a young adult, his housefolk journeyed to a town. Roy expected to only meet his next opponents in a show, but he deduced that his housefolk had not brought him solely to compete. They desired the pleasure of visiting their own kin and to rest for leisure. There was another cat and a dog at the residence, but they respected Roy’s space and treated him well as a guest.

Roy’s housefolk let someone else attend him in their stead when they left the house. Roy’s temporary servant decided to tether his harness to a stake in the ground that Roy could not pull up. Roy only allowed it so that he could stay outside unchaperoned, as it seemed his housefolk had not given the servant permission to accompany him on promenade. Given that the servant got the idea to use the dog’s tethering stake, Roy could see why. He did not trust the servant’s judgement either.

The tether was long enough that Roy could easily retreat to the house if danger presented itself and there was nothing in the garden for it to get caught or wrapped around, but it was insulting that this human thought Roy should have to do anything at all for himself. Protecting him was their job. Roy did not see how they could do that from inside the house. He would very loudly let his people know how unacceptable this treatment was, but first, he would suffer the indignity because the garden itself was acceptable.

While he relaxed outside in the sun, Roy met a stray named Cyrene. Cyrene was without housefolk or any proper home at all. From the way she carried herself, Roy suspected that, while baseborn, she was not truly uncivilized. His suspicions were confirmed when she told him of her former housefolk and their disownment of her.

She won his sympathies and they spent a long while together, bonding in ways that Roy had not expected to with a commoner. The pair had remained outside in the backyard, because Roy lacked permission from his hosts to bring Cyrene into the house.

When Roy’s housefolk learned of Cyrene, they would shoo her away whenever they saw her. Roy objected loudly to their actions. He thought bringing her into his household would be mutually beneficial to them all. Roy would gain a new cat to socialize with and be waited on by, thus giving his housefolk more time to themselves, and Cyrene would be returned to a respectable life.

To Roy, it was a perfect plan and he needn’t waste time telling it to Cyrene. However, he could not persuade his housefolk to see reason and open their hearts to her. By the time they readied to leave town, Roy’s housefolk had kept him sequestered in the house to keep him from Cyrene, though they managed some final conversations through a window screen. Roy wished Cyrene well and bid her farewell.

Almost two years later, Roy sometimes has fleeting moments of memories regarding their brief encounter, but he doesn’t recall much about Cyrene at all except that he liked her eyes. She was just one of the many, many cats he’s met, and she wasn’t important enough to remember. If any kits resulted from their time together, Roy would never know, nor would he think of them. He’s been far too busy winning shows and fulfilling his other duties.

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Roy is bigger than Duke and Cyrene. He weighs about 23lb.