Pursifal Apricat was one of a series of pieces I wrote for a cat my wife and I owned at the time. He was a flame-point cat with some Siamese in him who we'd rescued from a local shelter. Pursy was a very friendly cat that would actually come when I called him, bounding up the stairs if I were there and he was on the lower floor, a fact that I tried to incorporate in this work with a lively ragtime-inspired melody. 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 April 3, 1996.
