Sparky the wonder cat hits 20

Trying to purrfectly sum up Sparky is a bit of conundrum. Is he an aristocrat? Is he a Romeo? For sure he’s an adventurer.

The fluffy 20-year-old tomcat is a little tough to peg. A bit of daredevil, Sparky’s wanderlust has ticked away more than a few lives.

He’s been run over by a transit bus, chased by an RCMP German shepherd and two years ago was hovering near death after catching a superbug.

But the fluffy-furred mouser still scales a six-foot wooden fence in the backyard, taunts dogs across the street and makes friends with neighbourhood feral cats.

His family – or servants as Sparky considers them on certain given days – are St. Albert composer-lyricist Cindy Oxley and husband Alfonso Villalobos, as well as son Eliot Villalobos, now a medic for the City of Edmonton.

Oxley describes Christmas 2013 as the year of his near miraculous recovery after the family nearly lost its wet-nosed thrill-seeker.

“He had lost all the pink in his eyes, his ears. He was jaundiced. He had picked up a bug and got liver failure. It got to the point we were considering euthanizing him and were taking the advice of our veterinarian. She (Dr. Kelly Burgess) even had the needle ready. He knew and lifted his head. She pulled back,” said Oxley.

They quickly discussed giving him a new form of treatment, an antibiotic that only had a 15 to 20 per cent chance of recovery. Not wanting to lose a beloved pet, the family gave the treatment a go-ahead. Sparky, in his singular fashion, recuperated.

He joined the family two decades ago by accident. Oxley and son Eliot, walked into a St. Albert pet store to buy an algae terrarium.

“We walked out with him (Sparky),” Oxley laughed.

The then seven-year-old Eliot was an only child and his heartfelt sympathies went straight to the snowy, six-week old kitten locked in a cage.

“I turned to my mother and said, ‘He’s all alone just like me,’ ” Eliot smiled. Her son’s whispered voice and pleading eyes were Oxley’s downfall.

“My only memories of bringing him home is that my dad took one look at him and left the room.”

Alfonso, a self-admitted dog person, cared for a boxer while growing up in Chile, and was vexed about not being consulted on the purchase. That initial dust-up kick-started an ongoing “love-hate relationship” between man and cat.

“What I like about Sparky is we never had mice,” Alfonso said.

So what is Sparky’s personality like?

“He’s always been a jerk. He does typical cat stuff. If you pet him and stop, he attacks your hand and if you walk he attacks your ankles,” Eliot responded.

But his ties to Eliot were unusually deep. As youngsters they played hide-and-seek taking turns hiding and chasing each other. It was no accident that the Calvin and Hobbes book series became a favourite read.

When an older Eliot practiced guitar, Sparky would sit on the bed patiently listening. If someone interrupted the practice, the cat appeared genuinely put out.

“He was always a very attentive listener. It didn’t matter how loud I played.”

But it was the one-year-old intrepid tom that lost one of his nine lives the day a City of St. Albert Transit bus rolled over him.

“He was playing on the road. The bus driver didn’t even slow down when he approached and the bus didn’t even stop after he was run over. Luckily he crouched down (between the wheels) and the bus drove over top of him,” said Eliot describing the event as similar to a surreal, slow motion Looney Tunes cartoon.

By the time Sparky had reached the cocky age of three, he would delight in taunting a puppy German shepherd from the RCMP canine unit.

“He would stand on the fence and stare at the dog. One day the dog got big enough and chased Sparky down the street and up the tree. The dog was chasing Sparky. I was chasing the dog and Dad was worried I would get hurt by the dog and he was chasing me.”

“It was like a conga line,” chuckled Oxley at the distant memory.

Despite his aloofness and self-absorbed personality, Oxley truly believes Sparky is prescient.

“Five years ago, a month leading up to my stroke, he was constantly around my head and pawing at my head. Eliot had moved out a few months before and I thought he was needy,” she explained.

After her stroke everyone wondered ‘did he know?’ Was he trying to tell her something?

“In recovery, he spent more time with me than any creature on the planet. He’s misogynistic and possessive like a boyfriend. He monitors everything I do. But he’s been very instrumental in my recovery.”

In these mellower years, the feline scrapper who enjoys drinking out of the toilet bowl and chasing laser pointers has become a “Yoda guru” to the neighbourhood feral cats.

The animal loving Oxley-Villalobos family has over the years put cat pellets and water on their doorstep for wandering or lost cats. The hope is the animals will trust them and they can brought inside and readopted.

“If he’s sitting on the doorstep, the feral cats stick their head in and make themselves comfortable.”

They’ve had some success. Niko, a feral was tamed and adopted. Antonio refused to stay inside and James Bond, a tuxedo cat enjoys visiting whereas his romantic partner continues to distrust the family.

Although older than most cats, Sparky is still pretty young when compared to CrÄŤme Puff, the oldest cat every recorded. Born in August 1967 she lived to the ripe old age of 38.

At the end of the day, Sparky lives life to the fullest and expects nothing less from those around him.