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.
I know what you mean.
My first car was a ‘57 Chevy Belair my sister gave me in ‘67. Tom would get under the hood and sit by the engine block on cold nights every now and then. Sometimes he stayed in the house and others outside. Sometimes he would be gone for a few days.
One morning I was on my way to my part time job and forgot to look for Tom as I shut the door. That’s when he would run out if he was by the engine. The doors were pretty heavy and would make a decent enough noise when opened and closed to wake him up, and to scoot off. Except this one morning he didn’t run out, and I forgot to check. He got caught in the fan. Being mostly white, at first I thought it was snowing, but the sound of him banging into the underside of the hood made me realize something terrible was happening. So, I inadvertantly killed my own cat that I had rescued many years before. He was the last cat I had.
Now we have a dog, my daughter is allergic to cats. Max is an Austrailian Shepard we got him from a women who tries to find homes for puppies that would otherwise be euthanized.
He’s a great dog, lovable, smart, and a good watchdog.