"I've been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate,
A poet, a pawn and a king.
I've been up and down and over and out
And I know one thing:
Each time I find myself flat on my face,
I pick myself up and get back in the race."

-Frank Sinatra

[Author's note: The following story is about a stray cat, but a cat who turns out to be anything but feral].

On several occasions, a black and white tuxedo cat from the low-income apartment building next door had showed up in our driveway, usually to steal food from or fight with the feral tomcat we were taking care of, Scaredy Cat. Because of the catfights I would hear between the two of them in the months before Scaredy Cat got his neuter surgery, I assumed that this black and white fellow was also an unneutered tom. I started calling him Frankie, because like Sinatra, he was always wearing a tux. To me, he looked a bit like Socks, the First Cat. Although I only saw him about once a month, I started to develop a little cat-crush on Frankie, and wished we could trap him and take him for neuter surgery. However, I assumed he was probably being taken care of by one of the families in the apartment complex next door.