Idiosycratic Life

It’s time to play Name These Cats! (Not my cats, not my cats, not my cats)

Okay, I found a very nice no-kill shelter right here in Miami. Yay! Good solution for the kitties that I have been helping a neighbor take care of, right? Wrong. I went to the shelter today, but they stopped accepting animals, even though their web site says no animals are turned away. Supposedly, the shelter fosters animals out when they’re full, but even their foster families are overloaded. Bad news bear.

So I start driving around aimlessly with these kittens who somehow managed to get out of the box they were in (Which they did multiple times when I was trying to get them into the car) even though I put a big-ass, minimum 25 lb photo case carrying a 300 mm, f2.8 lens on top of it. (By the way, that thing about cats being smarter than dogs? It’s true.) So they are climbing all over my car, meowing and staring at me with their big blue eyes. I. CAN. NOT. KEEP. THEM. Unbearable.

I see a PetSmart, pull over, and figure I’ll go in and start begging people to take them. I go to the Adoption Center and try relentlessly to get Patricia, the woman in charge, to take these cats. It turns out she works for a non-profit rescue, and she is literally fostering 60, yes 6-0, cats at her home. All her foster families are completely overloaded. I tell her I just don’t know what to do; I want them to be healthy and safe, but I just can’t afford the $400+ to inoculate and neuter them, not to mention the $250 per animal pet fee at my apartment complex, which I have already forked over once for Princess Isabella.

The next thing I know, she has gone to my car, inoculated them both, and gives me directions to her house in Ft. Lauderdale where I pick up (all this is free for me) a litter box, a carrier, a fairly big crate, de-worming meds, flea meds (NOT cheap; Bella’s costs $41 for three months), etc. They have an appointment with a vet to be neutered next weekend, and Patricia is arranging to get me a trap for the mother cat, who, in addition to being the OPPOSITE of domesticated, is preggers again, I think. So the kittens are on my mostly enclosed porch in a crate right now. Bella, who body slammed herself into the glass door when they first appeared on my porch (on purpose, but YES, she did accidentally run into my sliding glass door at home once, and YES, I am famous for that, too, sigh....) is doing rather well with this. She is a big fan of staring at them through the glass at the moment.

ANYWAY, I am NOT keeping these kittens. There are a million reasons why I can’t. But I am fostering them for now, and I think I am going to volunteer with this organization on weekends, and hopefully have them adopted out very soon. BUT.. in order to be adopted, they need names. This organization refuses to number cats and dogs like inmates, and I can understand that actually.

SO... (Finally!) it is time to play Name the Cats!

Here is what Stephen, Alissa and I have discussed so far. (The kittens are both boys, by the way).

1. Fred and George (as in Weasley, from the H.P. books. They aren’t twins, but they are brothers, and they are kind of troublemakers, and I definitely don’t want to name them anything like Fluffy or Pouncer) This is probably my first choice so far.

2. Harry and Ron (as in, Harry Potter and Ron Weasley.) I like this a lot, actually, but my dad is named Harry, so that’s a little weird. On the other hand? I CAN’T KEEP THEM, so naming one Harry wouldn’t matter in the long run.

3. “Not My Cat” and “Also Not My Cat”. (Alissa suggested this one, as I kept insisting that these kittens are NOT mine. No. They are not. Not sure how this would go over on Adoption Days with the rescue organization, though)

4. “Take Me Home, Please” and “Please Take Me Home”- these crack me up! Still...

5. Monkey and Monkey (When Stephen and I are on the phone, and we still want to talk, but we have nothing left to say because neither of our days was particularly eventful, we end up just kind of being like, “Anyway, yeah... so, monkey, monkey.) It IS really funny to tell a story about them and refer to both of them as Monkey, (I tried it) but I’m not sure how this would go over with prospective parents either.

6. Mr. Thomas... for one of them. (When we were in London, Steve had this Art History professor- incredibly prim, middle-aged, British woman- who showed slides of her cat, saying, “And this is my life partner- MEES-ter THOM-as!” Call me, it’s better if you hear it)

Anyway, and all other “not obscene or cutesy” suggestions are welcomed! Please, comment away!! :)