Meet Lieutenant Soot on the Snoot--Lieu (loo 🚽) for short.

AKA Lieucifer, Lieuser, piss baby, gremlin, little man, probably-a-Austrian-professor-of-mathemetics-fired-for-hitting-students-in-his-past-life, and cutie boy.

I adopted Lieu in 2019 in California. He was miserable in his little cage, going as far as to hiss at volunteers and paw at any cat he could reach through the bars. Volunteers affectionately called him the resident asshole. As soon as he was let out, he came over to introduce himself before immediately scheming to see how he could escape the room. He rubbed against me on his trips back and forth between the doors and knocked his adoption paperwork onto me when trying to check out the windows.

Lieu's an anxious and insecure little man with quite the temper, but he is also extremely affectionate (to me), talkative, playful, and adventurous. Our mornings begin with him alternating headbutts, shoulder rides, and nuzzles with his duties as the household guard cat. Whether it's an unauthorized squirrel scampering across our balcony, the evil neighborhood cats, or deliverymen, Lieu will not let intruders out of his sight. A bonafide cave cat, Lieu prefers to approach prey (namely his favorite yellow bouncy ball) through makeshift tunnels or from behind paper bags. He very faste.

He is trained to walk in a harness, sit, open doors, and shake paws to give salam. He is officially an ESA. His fatal flaw is that he gets confused with the smallest obstacle or change to his usual bathroom routines. While he is primarily food-motivated (which helps immensely with training), he is also responsive to praise, affection, and attention.