Anyone who regularly finds themselves south of Madison Street and east of 17th Avenue probably knows Frito, a roving cat who does, in fact, have a home. by Nathalie Graham On Halloween night, Meganne walked from the rain into her Ch erry Hill apartment building and found a brown striped mackerel tabby cat roaming the halls, sodden and mewing. He looked like her neighbor Ruby Jean’s cat, Jorge, so she gave her a call.  Ruby Jean answered the phone. “It was 9 p.m. or something. I was at Wildrose,” she told me. Neighbors had frantically called and texted her about seeing her cat in the halls of her apartment building before. Like every other time, it was not her cat. Meganne didn’t know what to do. She opened the door to her apartment and the cat ran in. “This wet furball goes underneath my bed, and I'm like, ‘What's going on?’” After pulling the cat out, she noticed the phone number printed on his collar and made another call. “The person said, ‘Oh yeah, that's normal. Just let him go,’” Meganne says. “And it was raining, and I was like, ‘Okay,’ and I sort of pat him dry and let him off and that’s the story.” A month later, Meganne got a text with a link to a Partiful invitation. “Has my cat ever followed you home? Has he slept in your bed, eaten your food, and attempted to steal the affection of your own fur babies? If you’re getting this text the answer is probably yes. Which means YOU deserve to be celebrated.” The cat’s name was Frito. He was having a holiday party at Katy’s Corner Cafe and she was invited. So was the rest of the Central District, it seemed.  Anyone who regularly finds themselves south of Madison Street and east of 17th Avenue probably knows Frito. (Some people in farther-flung places even know Frito—he once wandered a mile and a half from home.) When you’re walking home from the Madison Safeway laden with groceries, he coils around your legs like a snake. He hangs out at Lilith Tattoo and has rolled around under salon chairs on Union Street. The baristas at Katy’s Corner Cafe know him well. He often climbs on customers and on at least one occasion has tried to snatch bacon from a breakfast sandwich.  Jenny, Frito’s owner, has only lived in the area for about two years. She moved from Bellingham, where Frito, a pandemic adoptee, roamed free despite Jenny’s best efforts. When she moved to the Central District, Frito insisted upon his outdoor lifestyle. If he’d survived Bellingham’s coyote packs, Jenny figured he could dodge the oncoming 2 bus. He’s savvy. And he quickly made a name for himself.  “A year and a half ago, I started noticing that people were calling me [saying], ‘Hey, your cat's following me down the road,’” Jenny says.  Soon, people were calling Jenny in the middle of the night. Frito was eating their cat’s food. Frito had made it onto their third-floor balcony. Frito was sleeping on their chest inside their apartment. Could Jenny come pick him up?  “For two weeks, I got a call every single night between 11 p.m. and 4 a.m. about him,” Jenny says, noting she would pick him up at any hour.Unable to live like this, Jenny bought Frito a fancy collar with a QR code. It takes anyone who scans it to his profile page. Jenny summarized the message there as:  “Hey, my name is Frito. I'm gonna act like an orphan, but I actually have a loving home, and I get fed all the time. Please, let me back outside.”  “This started a crazy journey for the next year where every single day, I was getting eight to 14 text messages or phone calls and voicemails a day about either him jumping on people's backs in random locations—people walking on the street and he's just riding on their shoulders down the street—him in people's beds, in people's couches, eating their cat food on their deck,” Jenny says.  Random strangers kept calling and texting—but instead of asking her to fetch Frito, they were sending updates. Some sent her photos of themselves with Frito.  “He's all up in their business, but people love him,” Jenny says.  Jenny loved the stories. She often thought she should do something with them, but never did until she wandered into Katy’s Corner Cafe this past spring.  “I came in and I didn't know they knew Frito, and I introduced myself as the owner of the crazy cat,” Jenny says.  According to Jenny, Katy, the owner, gasped. She shut up the whole coffee shop and announced, “Everyone, this is Frito’s mom!” The whole cafe reacted. Someone in the corner told Jenny, “Your cat is famous!” Jenny hadn’t realized he was a public figure. So, she planned a reception to build up the community that had taken shape around him and make a cold, dark, wintery Seattle feel warm.  “I harnessed the power of Frito,” Jenny says.   Frito at home. He couldn't stay at the party for long (he's a cat). BILLIE WINTER FOR THE STRANGER To find her guests, Jenny dove into her phone. She combed through her 183 missed calls and 40 unread texts, searching the terms “your cat” and “Frito” in her text history. She eventually sent 220 invites to those phone numbers. Around 50 people RSVP’d yes. Forty people said maybe.  On the second shortest day of the year, in the middle of yet another atmospheric river, people came to Katy’s Corner with chili and meat stew. The eponymous Katy had pushed back the cafe counter to make more gathering space. People chatted next to the espresso machine. There were plates of pecan pie squares and lemon bars abutting the window on the table where the milk and sugar usually sit. A cake bore Frito’s image. People brought white elephant gifts. They posed against the cafe’s outside wall with Frito-themed props and took pictures as the rain poured down. But mostly, they mingled.  “This is the most un-Seattle Seattle party ever,” said Ruby Jean, the owner of Frito’s dopplegänger. She wore a shirt covered in her own cat’s image. “I’m Canadian, so I can really tell you that this is not a normal Seattle thing.” This is Ruby Jean. Guess the cat's name. “It’s kind of an overwhelming feeling,” Jenny says. “I didn’t quite realize people were going to show up in the way they did.”  Throughout the night, she watched strangers swapping stories about Frito turn to their common interests, building connection and then community.  Neighborhood cats never cease to bring joy (unless you are a local bird). They are like little pockets of whimsy traipsing across your path. Just a neighborhood over, the people of Capitol Hill recently lost their beloved neighborhood cat, Lord Byron, a year ago. He broke into homes and martial arts studios. By the end, he belonged more to the entire neighborhood than he did to just his owner. His death—and the tributes it inspired—showed how much he meant to people. Judging from the turnout for Frito’s Holiday Party, this Central District cat may have already broken his way into this neighborhood’s heart.  ...read more read less