Furmata was one of a series of pieces I wrote for a cat my wife and I owned at the time. Furmata was a tortoise-shell cat who we'd rescued from a local shelter. She was an active cat that would fetch a small ball, and jump in tandom with it as she was chasing it as it bounced. She also had an ability to leap up in the air higher than any cat I've ever known, a fact that I tried to incorporate in this work with leaping melodic lines in one section. Like my other orchestra cat pieces, this one was originally composed for piano as part of my Five Kitty Sketches, and then orchestrated for performance by the Bloomington Pops Orchestra. It was premiered by that orchestra, conducted by my father, John Canfield, on November 20, 1993.
