We always had cats when I was a kid. The one who really stands out in my memory was a mostly-Manx named Tiger. Gray, tabby-patterned, and with no tail, as is typical of the Manx breed.
Tiger was utterly ruthless when it came to defending her territory, which included essentially everything she could see, and seemed to have no concept of fear. She routinely drove off stray dogs of all sizes, favoring a “leap-onto-their-heads-and-start-ripping” strategy. Whenever a dog or other intruder stepped onto our property, we always knew about it, because Tiger would take off like a bullet, making that creepy “fingernails on a chalkboard” noise that cats do.
One day during summer vacation, when I was about 8, my sister noticed somebody wandering around in the yard. We didn’t see why anybody would be out there in the pouring rain, but we went around the house looking out the windows. Finally, we heard Tiger snarling… then we heard a man call for help.
Emerging onto the back porch, we found a grown man, wearing a raincoat and a power company hat, backed up against the wall of the house, staring nervously at a very wet and very angry Tiger, who gave the impression that the only reason she hadn’t already killed him was that his head was so inconveniently far off the ground.
The man (a meter reader) looked over at us and said, “Could you please call off your cat?”
Despite her ferocity, Tiger was perfectly well-behaved around our family. She never even scratched any of us, never damaged any furniture, and reliably went to the door when she needed to evacuate her wastes.
On weekend mornings, I had a habit of sleeping late. If I slept late enough, Tiger would come back into my room (the only time she ever went into the rear section of the house), jump on the bed, and wake me up, generally by jamming her nose into my ear. My family swears that this performance was always preceeded by Tiger looking around at them, as if realizing that somebody was missing.