The same week that Claudius was moving into my household, I opened my kitchen door one morning and felt something brush past my feet. I turned around to see a kitten in the middle of my kitchen, just as confident and self-assured as you please. He said "Eeew!" (translation: "Feed me!"); I said "GO HOME!" and dumped him back outside the door. I went to work, came home, had occasion to open the kitchen door again, and zoom! Kitten in the kitchen. Removed kitten, closed door.

This went on for some three days, and he never missed an opportunity to try to charge through that door. He was camping in the garage and showed no signs of going away, and he was only about nine weeks old. The inevitable upshot was that he moved in.

Anzu was an energetic, assertive cat. He was very active, charged around the house at high speed, pounced on assorted real and imaginary objects, insisted on snuggling on my chest while I was reading in bed (effectively blocking my view of the book, but he had a wonderful purr), investigated anything I had that looked or smelled remotely edible, and generally made his presence felt. He wasn't a big cat -- his feet were small and elegant -- but he became quite solid once he filled out. His voice was normally rather squeaky and only occasionally showed traces of the typically raucous Siamese tone. He played with several other cats, and in his early days was promptly adopted by Clovis, who loved kittens.

Anzu exhibited the typical Siamese penchant for thievery, stealing anything which captured his fancy -- and his fancies were occasionally rather strange. One evening I investigated a strange noise in the living room, only to find Anzu proudly dragging a kitchen spatula across the floor. He'd fished it out of the drainer, and only he knew what he planned to do with it. Later, he developed a fondness for the toilet brush, which I kept finding in odd corners of the house.

Anzu and Megaera hit it off right away, and the two of them teamed up to raid any food I turned my back on. It used to be that I only had to guard things like chicken, tuna, or cheese, but once these two -- the Awful Omnivores, as I called them -- were on patrol, nothing was safe. They loved salad, steamed vegetables (especially broccoli), pasta and beans, canned tomatoes, bread... I quickly learned not to leave anything unattended. Anzu and Boudicca were also very fond of each other, and often curled up together.

In September of 2013, when Anzu was 13 years old, his abdomen suddenly became very distended. He proved to have ascites (fluid in the abdominal cavity), and diagnostic tests showed that it was due to liver cancer. The cancer was already quite advanced and diffuse, and no effective treatment was possible. All I could do was provide palliative care; I put him on prednisolone, a corticosteroid which can often alleviate symptoms for a little while, and he was his usual cheerful, lively self for another month. Then the cancer got to the point where the medication could no longer help, so I said good-bye. Sadly, I had to put Anzu to sleep the day after little Findabhair had died; it was a difficult week.