Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

Well, the "found cat" signs have probably been up long enough to start calling her "my cat" and deciding what to name her. (The signs blew away in the thunderstorm a couple of nights ago, but they'd been up about a week.) I did eventually realize that a large part of the reason I dragged my feet so long putting the signs up was that I was really afraid her former owner would show up. (No, no, you don't have to say it -- the myriad voices saying, "Duuuuh!" have been read into the record as if it had been spoken. You don't have to say it.) Name suggestions (some sounding like more than mere suggestions) are coming in, and I've got a couple of ideas of my own. (I'm tempted to name her "Laura" because I get mail here addressed to someone I've never met named Laura, so I figure, hey, maybe that's the cat, and she just started the mail forwarding to this address in anticipation of her getting here.)

But I've discovered she's not really a cat. She's a toon. Tonight after 3LF rehearsal, dmk, her mother, and I were standing in my kitchen when the cat squished herself flat and slid under the oven. That is not a cat-sized opening. And remember, although I've never owned (okay, been owned by) a cat before now, I've lived with cats a lot, on and off. (Wait, maybe she's a mouse in a cat disguise. Isn't that a mouse trick? Or instead of being a tiny cat, she's a very oddly shaped, large ferret. But I think she's a toon.) She sat quietly under there with just the edge of her tail showing for a while, ignoring any attempts to lure her out. Then when we were about to wander off to another part of the house, she squeezed out like toothpaste coming out of its tube, re-inflating her body cartoon style, I swear along the way. Still photos aren't going to cut it for this, if I catch her at it again; I'm gonna have to shoot video. It's an eyeball-bending thing to watch. Truly surreal.

I mean it: squish, flat cat, toothpaste, re-inflate, toon. Especially the toothpaste imagery. Freaky

I've got some photos I shot on my deck the day she and I met, but I haven't been happy with the scans I've gotten on my flatbed. Here are two of them anyhow, plus one I shot in the basement with dmk's digicam.

When I get a scan that really shows the magnificence of her coat and the markings around her eyes, I'll post a larger image. :-) Note that the milkiness of her eyes in the third image is glare from the pop-flash on the digicam -- her eyes are actually clear and healthy. She does have a little bit of brown in her coat, which is more noticeable now than it was a couple of weeks ago. It's mostly on her chest.

The other change since she arrived is that she looks like a rather small cat now, instead of looking like a nearly-grown kitten. And that's the difference of a few pounds of weight on her.

Were I not so tired, I could babble more about her (behind another cut-tag, of course), but I'm feeling headachy and dizzy, so I'll keep this short, apologize for how long it took me to get the images up (I had to convince myself it was okay to show them even though I wasn't happy with the scans -- I like the wet prints that the scans were made from), and say that yes, I will be accepting the assistance that was offered regarding paying for her upkeep.

Other than revealing her cartoon nature to us, she seems to be a basically healthy cat. I think the house is too hot for her (unsurprising -- it's really too hot for me), but she escapes to the basement to cool off. She pouts at me when I don't let her have her way (such as when I remove her from the blue bedroom (designated cat-fur-free zone) after a lighting dash between my legs, or when I dare to put on clothes and leave the house (but she's happy/relieved when I come back), or when she wants to play ultra-swat and I'm too busy, but not-getting-her-way aside, she seems a happy enough cat. Likes people in general, not just me. Affectionate. And the most bratty things she does are to try to get on the keyboards, and to try to make my hands too busy to type. She's a sweetie.

Okay, tempted to babble more after all -- deleting the paragraph I just started so I can wrap this up and crash.

Other name ideas, besides Laura:

• Belle, or Belle Chat, though that's more a description than a name
• Sihaya, from Dune
• Bibi, after a friend I've lost touch with -- that's the obvious shortening of the friend's name, but no the shortening she prefers, so if I ever manage to re-establish contact with her, it shouldn't cause confusion (Soheyla, if you're reading this, drop me a line!)
• Rachelle (or maybe Raquelle), after a friend the markings around her eyes remind me of, but who has since changed her name (so it shouldn't be confusing name-collision-wise, but it still feels a little confusing to call the cat that)
• Betty, I'm not sure why