being all alone in the world.
Abandoned. Vulnerable. Frightened.
After 20 minutes of getting to know Jenn on one side of the room and playfully being distracted by flying objects outside the window, this furry little feline reluctantly sauntered over to my chair on the other side of the room and immediately collapsed between my feet, rolled over and spoke her first sweet words to me. The first time I ever touched her was on the middle of her soft little belly after she rolled onto her back. I stroked her tummy and she looked into my eyes, purring.
After eight years of balking at the notion of having a cat, I immediately looked up at my wife and said: “We’re taking this cat!”
She said, “Are you sure?”
I told her that I’d never been more sure of anything in my life.
We never even considered looking at another cat.
She was my first, my last – my everything.
We weren’t allowed to take her home that day because Bmore Humane needed to make sure her physical needs were met and that our vetting process was complete. (And, yes, they really do call your references and make sure that you are a worthy pet guardian.)
I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen my wife happier than that day when we left Nicodemus Road to begin buying pet supplies, toys, food and everything “Bree” would need on that Monday, when Jenn could pick her up for good.
We knew we weren’t going to name her “Bree.” It sounded more like a porn star than a name for our cat. We had been studying various Buddhist names and wanted to give her a unique name that wouldn’t be associated with any other creature or word we’d ever heard.
We decided that we’d get her home and try to find the right name that fit her personality.
Two days later, I was in Albany, New York at a Bruce Springsteen concert on April 16, 2012 on the “Magic” tour when Jenn picked up our new feline and brought her home alone. She texted me this first picture of our magical new roommate when I was in the pit at the Knickerbocker Arena and suggested that perhaps we should consider a Springsteen female song name for her:
Jenn then slept with her all night on the floor in our spare room trying to make her skittish fears subside. The next day, I came home from the airport and there she was in the middle of the floor staring at me. In the days leading up to the adoption, we kept referring to our future cat as “the kitty” so it was kind of a natural name but it was completely the opposite of the unique moniker we had sought. Under our living room coffee table, I owned a Springsteen songbook with all of the lyrics from the first 25 years of his career. That afternoon I opened the book randomly to a page in search of a potential female name or a word or phrase that could trigger a name for “the kitty.”
The first page that opened in the hardback Bruce tome was the one with the title, “Kitty’s Back” – an obscure, lengthy, jazz-infused romp from “The Wild, The Innocent and The E Street Shuffle.” It’s a song about a “cat” that leaves the alley and winds up at the pound but returns to her old stomping ground with a vengeance.
From that moment on, our gorgeous girl simply became “Kitty.”
That didn’t stop us from having more nicknames for her than I can recount. We started calling her “Skitty” because she didn’t like the sounds of our icemaker and phone and washer and dryer. She got acclimated with every faux enemy in our condo but until the day we lost her, she still considered the vacuum cleaner the axis of evil in the universe.
We called her “Muncher” because she nibbled on the dead limbs of plants in our condo.
We called her “Munchkin” because she was so tiny, so Kitty-like in her playfulness and demeanor.
We called her “Muffin” – short for love muffin.
We called her our furry little ball of love because that’s what she was.
My wife called her Sunshine.
I called her my Sweet Girl.
The first month, we had to learn all of her little idiosyncrasies and wants and needs. She loved chasing a laser pointer or anything that shined on the walls or ceiling. She loved toy mice but wasn’t all that into feathers or most toys that she didn’t control. She was a gravy lover and preferred chicken and fish over anything beef. She simply wasn’t into cat nip at all – it did nothing for her. She was impeccably clean and well groomed. She also shed like crazy and her incredible softness and beauty was due to the
