My cat Copy was a learner.

He held a strong curiosity to the world all his life. When he was around 9 to 10 months of age, he copied our action—though he didn’t understand it—and kept throwing his doll into the kitchen bin. And we had to pick the doll out of kitchen waste and gave it back to him.

When he was about 12 months of age, he started to look out of the window and soon attracted by birds who stopped by, perching on the branches in the front of our windows. Then Copy tried very hard to mimic birds’ twitters—he showed more respect to it than a certain rich guy I’d say. He kept practicing this foreign language for about three months, before he started to join us, leaving home on weekdays for whatever reason we kept a secret from him.

He was very brave stepping into the world, very cautious and smart—he never run far from home until he figured out all possible access to our apartment. He immediately joined the local cat society. I spot several times he and another little yellow cat stick together, lying with a gang of stray cats.

It took him three more years to rise to the alpha male in the local cat gang. He turned out to be a very handsome cat: beautiful muscular physique, self-assured leader charisma, confident and comfortable about the neighborhood—yet he remained a sweetheart at home and never made any trouble as always. He was widely noticed in the neighborhood. Many residents in the neighborhood have come up to my parents in the street, reporting seeing him in the campus of the university opposite the street doing certain business, or seeing him chasing some little female cats, or complaining that he got their cats pregnant before they had time to spay them. God knows how and where they learned Copy was our cat.

But the female cat he loved the most all his life was the yellow cat he met when he first joined the local stray cat gang. He even led her back when she got pregnant one year and occupied our balcony, who shamelessly ate our cat food and carefully-cooked chicken breasts, enjoying our daily guest room cleaning service, without allowing us to pet the kittens—she kept wariness towards human all the time and she lives.

Copy died last year in car accident we guess—we didn’t see his body, but some neighbors reported the heartbreak news to us when we back home in the evening that they saw his dead body in the morning. Copy lived for nine years, healthy and happily. We love him.