The little lummox has an arch enemy ...

... who lives in a little box on the porch of the house next door. He hates the cat that lives there because he regularly comes out of his little box, parades all over the lummox's own driveway, and then does slow, languorous tummy rolls. Our little lunatic has a complete meltdown.

The cat's name is Fluffy, or as I believe lummox thinks of him, "The Evil Dr Fluffy." He came to the neighborhood late one evening, with no known antecedents, looking like any old tom, and settled in. The lummox hates him. In fact the little lummox has decided that his mission in life is to protect the household and his pack (i.e. Carmen and Clemens) from the clutches of Dr Fluffy. This is how he earns the excessively good treatment he receives here.

The Evil Dr Fluffy is a striking looking cat, with a battered boxers face and a big pink WC Fields nose. He's a hard bitten looking veteran of god-knows-what.

The other day I was in the Hickory Barnes and Nobles, where we had gone just to get out of the house after days of snow and ice, when flipping through a picture book, I saw THAT FACE! Exactly. And the caption explained that it was the face of an exotic cat called ... The Turkish Van. I couldn't believe it. The evil one had a pedigree.

It's true. Here is a picture of a Turkish Van mix, which looks exactly like Fluffy, right down to his unusually fluffy black tail, and the WC Fields nose. Here is a description by the owner of the cat in the picture describing his destinctive fur:

It’s like a cashmere baby blanket, or the softest fur on the tiniest bunny you ever saw. Turns out Vans do not have the awn and guard hairs most cats do, just the silky downy stuff.

The other giveaway is his markings. The characteristic Van pattern is a brilliant white body with a colored tail and matching head, or as I call it, his toupee. As merely a VanAlike, Alfie doesn’t have stripes on his very plushy tail and as seen in pix, he’s got some big Holstein-like dark spots mixed up on his otherwise white body.

It's Dr Fluffy! I am so amazed. This breed comes from the shores of Lake Van, in Turkey, though it is really the ancient homeland of the Armenians. These cats are exotic, mysterious, high bred, with an amazing history.

So from now on it is no longer The Evil Dr Fluffy, but Herr Doktor Doktor Fluffy