Weasie was completely "full of it" in public. Every time an unmet person approached on the sidewalk who she sensed was a soft touch, out came the pity party violin. Back and forth across their path she'd go while tilting her head just right and wailing. Occasionally the unsuspecting victim would walk around her and go on their way. Much more often than not, though, she would at the very least earn some petting and some soothing words. Not infrequently the "poor kitty" would be invited home and fed. She always managed to find tummy space despite having eaten usually minutes before.
Now and then this would become a major aggravation. One summer afternoon, as I crossed a street near home at an intersection a car rolled up to the stop sign
with Weasie riding in the front seat. 
The friendly man at the wheel laughed and said there was no stopping her from following him, so he was taking her home before calling me to "be sure she stayed safe." (I'd no reason to doubt him because no effort was made to conceal the feline, and he promptly passed her out the window to me.) Most infamous was the evening when she told her tale of woe to a family who took it upon themselves to cart her off to their home in NEW HAMPSHIRE after reporting the "stray" to the police.
Naturally there was never a convenient day for them to bring her back, so...
The years flew by. Between mellowing, and finding fewer strangers to con, Weasie largely curtailed the drama although she still found a sucker from time to time. As she entered her final months of life the scamming returned. It didn't take her long to deduce that her weight loss caused by cancer helped her nonsensical claims of starvation.
(To be fair - feeding her was nourishing the disease and she probably could never feel full.) An eleven-story apartment building around the corner from us became her base of operations. She'd park herself outside the lobby until somebody bought her sob story. Whenever I wanted to find her I knew the first place to look. One morning I caught Weasie red, er, pawed sitting at the base of the last tree on our block with her eyes trained on the cross street. Her expression communicated the classic, "I wasn't doing anything but catching some shade, REALLY!" After a long time without an ID collar she was given another, finally, since the microchip by itself wasn't stopping her adventures. My procrastinating self got around to it after she talked her way into the arms, and then the house, of passing pedestrians who lived five blocks distant. (They, like so many others that fall, were directed to me after phoning the city's Animal Commission. As soon as "noisy gray tabby, white chin, skinny" was said the caller would be told, "That's Weasie."
) That collar served to prevent any more separations and, just as during the '90s, got me introduced to some new people.
When it was time to take Weasie on her last trip to the vet clinic, I decided to not use the pet carrier she'd traveled in for her entire 19 years with me. When I retrieved her from New Hampshire back in February of 1995 the "rescuers" surrendered her in a sturdy cardboard "Pet Waggin (sic.)" For laughs I'd held onto it as a memento. It was fitting that she set out from home, never to return in the same form, by way of a symbol of her tall tales told to passersby.
P.S. Neither Blaliko nor Seteria show any inclination to fib. They - at least the mom - knew true hardship before adopting me. Plus they're still leery of anyone besides me from having had to subsist outdoors.
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