Meet Pirate Cat, the Monon's most hornswaggling pillager

It's possible you've seen Pirate Cat carousing on the Monon Trail, usually somewhere around 96th Street.

He might be resting in the sun from general scallywaggery or plundering a nearby sports club, which he's done a bunch of times because no human can stop him from pillaging for booty.

He has no interest in messing with lads or lasses, but he fakes it well. Really well. Almost a little too well.

He frequently raids neighboring backyards, and sometimes even makes it inside another captain's ship.

But this orange and white, 6ish-year-old, (does anyone know a swashbuckler's real age?) always-dirty cat really hates being inside.

Despite all that, Pirate Cat, often called by just his initials "PC" on the Internet, is pretty much the worst pirate ever: He has a weakness — a pegged leg, if you will — for food, dogs and snuggles.

And even though he's become a local cat-lebrity around his claimed territory, he's not shipless. He wears an orange-red collar with a large metal tag that directs anyone who might walk across his plank to a Facebook page and his personal phone number that goes directly to this recorded message:

"Please put the cat down. It is not in distress. It does not need you to save it. It has a lovely home it will return to after its walk."

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The voice belongs to his person, Amanda Cancilla, a tattoo artist at Artistic Skin Design in Noblesville and reconstructive tattoo artist at St. Vincent Health where she creates 3D areola tattoos for people who have had mastectomies.

Cancilla's boyfriend, Matt Gufreda, met and fell in love with Pirate Cat a few years ago when he was a volunteer at FACE Low-Cost Animal Clinic. Gufreda brought him home to the Nora house the couple shares their two children. They named him Pirate Cat because he'd sit on their shoulders like a parrot.

"(FACE) told us he'd previously been an indoor/outdoor cat," Cancilla, 38, said. "It was very obvious he preferred to be outside."

That became even more apparent, Cancilla said, when Pirate Cat soaked their new couch in that pungent, angry way only cats do.

"He's obviously not OK with this," Cancilla said. "At that point, I think he was done with us, too."

After talking with her vet, they decided to help Pirate Cat become the feral cat he was meant to be by removing his microchip and tipping his ear. Ear tipping is a painless process to remove a small portion of a spayed or neutered cat's ear to indicate that it's feral, and should therefore be left where it is.

"As he'd wander farther and farther, everyone would be freaked out about him," she said. "People would get really mad. It's like people have never met an outdoor cat before. It's really bizarre."

Cancilla and Gufreda tried different messages on Pirate Cat's tag, but it didn't stop the angry calls from people worried about his health and their pet parenting. It also didn't stop people from taking him to shelters or even their own homes.

"He'd been everywhere," Cancilla said. "He's been taken to every humane society. He's been to vets. He's been to people's houses. It really got super annoying."

Cancilla decided to have fun with Pirate Cat's bootswaggling. Cancilla created a Facebook page in May for him called @TheOnlyPirateCat, and encouraged people to take photos with him and post them to the page.

"I thought, maybe it'll turn into a more fun thing than an annoying thing," she said. "It just blew up, and he's always on the Monon. So we can keep track of him."

That last part has actually come in handy: Pirate Cat fans will call the number when he looks like he needs vet attention (including the time that he had fleas).

"I don't worry, per se, but I want to do know what he's doing," she said. "He's still our responsibility. We do take care of him. We do leave food and water out for him every day. We have a place for him when it gets cold. He's welcome to come in, but I don't think that he will."

The page has more than 700 likes and averages a few posts a day. Cancilla posts to it using Pirate Cat's identity.

"I think it's hilarious," she said. "There's really no other word to describe it. He's so personable to people. He just walks up to people and wants to be touched. I like being able to react to that, too. It's kind of my little alter ego."

Their relationship with Pirate Cat isn't like the more traditional ownership one they have with their other pets — a cat, two dogs and a rat — Cancilla said, because no one could possibly own Pirate Cat.

"We do care about him very much and he's still a loved member of our family," she said. "He's just not here hardly ever."

Call IndyStar reporter Amy Barrrrrrrrrrrrrtner at (317) 444-6752. Follow her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.