Cat Burglar By Heather Champ
Princess Dorothea Blanche Champ was named for the two sooty spots that marred her otherwise perfectly white pelt of feline fur. We called her Dot for short.
What I didn't know was that white cats are typically deaf or mute. Dot's mother had been mute, but Dot wasn't. It wasn't until her six-month checkup that I realized Dot was deaf. But by then she'd already gotten a taste of the great outdoors, and it seemed mean to keep her in, so out the door she went every day. Dot was fearless.
At one point in our journey together, we inhabited a dingy apartment above a store on Queen Street West, Toronto. The back door of our apartment opened out onto the roof of a bicycle shop, and if you walked out the edge and turned around, you could survey all that was Dot's domain. I don't know what drove her to it, but my beautiful white cat turned to a life of crime.