Pretty cool.
I had a cat I rescued from a storm drain when I was a kid.
I was riding my bycycle down the street to meet a friend arounf half way to his house. As I was sitting on the curb beside the drain, I heard some kittens mewing. I looked around and saw a large cat aboout the same color as the kittens dead on the side of the road.
Well, being around 12 or so, I crawled down the drain and wrapped the 3 kittens in my shirt, and took them out.
I gave 2 of them away, and kept one.
He grew to be an enormous Tom, and was the king of the neighborhood. Dogs wouldn’t screw around with this cat, more than one went howling out of the yard with a wild cat on it’s shoulders.
Almost every morning it would leave a mouse or young rabbit on the back porch. You could not pet Tom unless he wanted to be petted, and he would let you know when, and at his leisure.
He was an awesome cat I once weighed him on the bathroom scale (not an easy feat) and he topped 20 pounds. Not as big as a Maine Coon, but he was also not a fat cat, just a tough, but most of the times loveable Tom.
Ol’ Tom sounds like a cool cat, Dan. And would score 100% on the ‘is my cat going to kill me’ meter!
I had a white fuzzy cat(similar to an angora)that I rescued when I was a young boy. The family loved him and he grew to the size you are talking about(20 lbs or so). He was hell at catching most animals but had a hard time with birds(I believe the white color gave him away). One morning when he didn’t show up for his daily feeding I found him ont ehe bank of the creek(we lived out in the country)dead, with a dead raccoon lying beside him. They were both ripped to shreds. I could only imagine they fought and killed each other. I surely missed that cat for a long time and have never had another like him.