Today we want to tell you about Granpa Rexs Allen, who fled this coil of tears on the morning of April 1, 1998, at the age of 34 years, 2 months, and 4 hours. Granpa's seniority was the chief reason why our Cultural Demographics Committee decided by a unanimous vote of 2-0 to give the award to Granpa. The committee was certain there was no cat older than Granpa that was going to die before the year did, nor was there any cat alive this year whose achievement could rival Granpa's. For a while Soxy, a cat who had survived an 11,000-volt hit of electricity at a substation in England, was a sparkling contender, but he came to grief when he paid a return visit to that substation.

Lucky Pierre

Granpa Rexs Allen, a sphynx, was adopted from the Humane Society of Travis County (Texas) by Jake Perry on January 16, 1970. "That year I adopted Granpa I was always in and out of the shelter, finding and adopting cats, trying to make show cats," said Perry, 66, a retired plumber who lives in Austin. Perry estimates that he and his wife, Judy, adopted "over 400 cats. We took sick ones and injured ones, our expense, got them on their feet, kind of trained them, you know, find them a home or take them back to the shelter where they can make the adoption fees to help the others."

According to Perry, Granpa had been found "at the intersection of Windsor Road and Expedition. They guy who found him took him to the shelter because he figured he was going to get killed, run over, you know. I was there when they brought him in."

Perhaps the fellow who found Granpa hadn't noticed the cat was hairless, but Perry doesn't miss a trick, so he put up posters in the Austin area, advertising his found cat. "I was trying to find something on him," said Perry, "because he kinda was a rare cat."