Early 1986 - November 19, 1999
NAME ORIGIN
After Roo of Kanga and Roo, from Winnie the Pooh.
Other names considered:  Roo was really hard to name for some reason.  After struggling for a long time, I finally decided to name him Quark, since he was so little.  The name never stuck, and one day as he bounded across the living room with his hippity-hop gait, I exclaimed, "I should have named him Roo!"  That name stuck.  I still have an old tag with the name Quark on it in a drawer somewhere.
NICKNAME(S)
Once he was finally named, he always went by Roo.
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION
Small and stocky, with a very dense, fluffy coat.   He weighed 8 or 9 pounds (3.6 - 4.1 kg), and because he was petite and cute, he was often mistaken for a female cat.  Roo obviously had a lot of Manx blood in him, as evidenced by his build and his little cottonball tail.  The bone in his tail actually curled around like a corkscrew, and when he got silly, his tail twirled around in circles.
Roo was never much into climbing and jumping, but he could wrestle and play-fight well enough to make much larger cats yell "uncle," and he used moves I've never seen another cat use.  He could flip himself around and attack from a different angle before his opponent knew what hit him, and he could wriggle out of any wrestling hold.  He is also the only cat I've ever seen deliberately kick another cat.
Roo's thick, medium-long coat made him impervious to cold.  He had no problem lying on the cement floor of the porch in the middle of winter when he felt like looking outside.
MEOW
Quite loud and piercing.  He sometimes had meowing fits for no reason we could determine.  Like Obsidian, he enjoyed roaming around the house and meowing, apparently just to hear the sound of his voice.
PURR / BISCUITS
Purr:  Very loud and almost constant.  All I had to do was say, "Hi, Roo" to get him started.  I read something once that said adult cats only purr when around people and not when around other cats.  Roo proved that theory wrong, as he loved to curl up with other cats and purr.
Biscuits:  He made biscuits occasionally.
HISTORY
There was a small population of stray cats hanging around the first apartment I lived in after I moved to Tucson.  A few months before my roommate and I were scheduled to move to a new apartment complex, Roo began showing up.   He appeared to be about 5 months old and was marked very much like Pendaran, but was ratty-looking and malnourished.  Oddly, he was always in the company of an unneutered adult male cat.
We put food out for the guys for some time.   When our moving day grew near we couldn't handle leaving Roo behind, but it wasn't like he'd let us just walk up to him and pick him up, either.  He was probably born feral and was pretty skittish.  My roommate finally managed to trap him just before we left.
On his first visit to the vet, we learned he was closer to 10 months old than 5.  He might have been a small cat regardless, but malnutrition certainly didn't help.
Instead of showing his gratitude to my roommate for rescuing him, Roo decided he was going to be my cat.  I vividly remember the first time he willingly made contact with a person.  I was standing in the kitchen, making dinner or something, and he crept out of his hiding place in the bedroom, made his way nervously but determinedly across the living room, then walked over to where I was standing and sat on my feet.
PERSONALITY
Roo was pretty wild at first and was not very comfortable around people.  I worried for a while that he would have a tough time adjusting to being a housecat, but my fears were unfounded.  He tamed rapidly, and rather than pining for the great outdoors, he didn't even bother looking out the window for the first year I had him.
He was always very affectionate, but when he played, he got psycho: his little stump tail twirled in circles, he got all twitchy, and there was a wild look in his eyes.  In Psycho Mode, he was ready to play-fight anyone and routinely took on Pendaran and later Morgan, both of whom were much larger than he was.  He routinely won, too.  He continued to go into Psycho Mode periodically even into the last year of his life.
Roo was a quirky little guy.  Most of the time he was a creampuff, but he liked biting people every so often.  He only bit people he liked, so I guess it was kind of a love nip.  It wasn't as though he drew blood, but he bit harder than most cats do when they are playing.
He was a great alarm clock, purring at top volume and smearing his nose on my face when he wanted me to get up.  If I didn't get up, he carefully placed a bottom tooth inside my nostril and a top tooth outside it and then bit down.  That never failed to wake me up.
He loved being around other cats and especially liked kittens.  Good thing, too, since during his lifetime, he lived with 11 of my cats and several cats belonging to my roommate.  By the time we got Orion and Andromeda, Roo had lost his vision.  He couldn't really seek out the kittens, but when they came anywhere near him, he washed them.  I'm glad they got the opportunity to know their Uncle Roo.
MEDICAL CONDITIONS
Possible allergy to antibiotics; probable intestinal lymphoma; probable hypertension.  See Details.
HOBBIES / INTERESTS
Wrestling; curling up with other cats; raising kittens; lying on his side and kicking the carpet; waking up his Mama.
FRIENDS
Roo had lots of friends over the course of his life, but he was closest to Blue Moon, Morgan, and Sasabe.  Toward the end, Sasabe seemed to realize he was sick and was very attentive and gentle toward him.  It took her a while to get over losing him.

SCARED OF THE VACUUM CLEANER?

No.