Meet our little spitfire, Aras.  Aras is our youngest cat, and being a domestic cat, he ended up the smallest of our felines, so he eternally looks the part of bunso.  It didn’t matter that as early as 3 months  old, when we rescued him from a Batangas island, we fed him the best food, gave him supplements, but he never really grew anymore.

We call him our jologs cat.  Our biggest problem with him is that he’s always PG (patay-gutom).  It doesn’t matter how much food we give him, he’s always hungry and therefore always eats so fast!  If you watch the other 2 cats eat, Duke and Isis, they eat so daintily, taking food one kibble at a time, making time to clean their whiskers every few minutes, and remaining prissily clean throughout the whole process.  Not Aras.  He will gobble up the food in large mouthfuls, often choking, finishing way ahead of the other two, then vomiting everything an hour later because he ate too much, too fast. Sigh.

He is also, in many ways, our most feral cat.  It doesn’t matter how long we’ve taken care of him, he is our least domesticated cat.  We also call him our wildcat, mainly because he really retained a lot of his wild qualities.  His tiger stripes are perfect for him because he’s a Bengal in a kitty cat’s body.  He hates being groomed, he hates having his claws trimmed, and he ’s uncomfortable being held or cuddled.  It’s frustrating actually, because he’s so cute but I can’t cuddle him.

Not really being a cat person, he’s also the cat I’m most afraid of.  He’s so unpredictable.  One time (and the last time) that I took him out of the condo, I rode on the elevator and he freaked out when the car stopped on a floor, and someone stepped in.  He started clawing and scratching and he flipped out completely!  I had open wounds on my arms and face and some of them bleeding profusely.  I was so scared of him for months, that I wouldn’t even touch him!  But eventually, I got accustomed to the different way of handle cats.  But I must admit, I’m still on guard every time I need to handle him.

But surprisingly, despite his wildcat nature, he’s the friendliest to strangers.  As long as you don’t try to pick him up, he’ll readily approach strangers, at least more than the other 2.  In fact, he once ended up winning the “friendliest cat” award in one cat show.  He even landed in the Philippine Star when they featured the cat show.

Like the other 2, Aras is also neutered, after which he calmed down quite a bit.  In fact, there was a time I considered giving him away because I felt he was a little to feral for my capabilities.  I wasn’t sure I could handle a cat who still had so much of the savage in him.  But thank God I didn’t because although he is the pet I least interact directly with, he’s family, and you don’t give up on family.

I really LOVE the 50mm lenses because Aras is the most difficult to photograph because he’s the most skittish with the camera.  He’d run away even before I’m in position to click.  I have to be like a cat myself, stalking and creeping on all fours, just to find him during an unguarded moment and capture that image.

I love how the lenses, together with the high ISO of the D90, captures images of Aras so sharply, even under low light.  I love how I finally captured in a photograph his wonderful tiger stripes.  He’s always been the pet with the LEAST pictures, not because he’s not beautiful, but because he’s so elusive.

So despite being jologs, Aras will always have a special place in our hearts.  To us, he’ll always be that fragile little kitty who we rescued from being drowned in the middle of the Mainit channel.  I’m glad I didn’t give up on the little fella.  It was my mistake trying to tame an animal of the wild.  In fact he isn’t wild, he’s just being a cat.  I just had to learn to stop dictating how he should behave in human society and let him be the animal that God created him to be.  I also should never forget that inasmuch as we chose him, he chose us as well.  He’s our hellion wildcat, and we wouldn’t want him any other way.