Wednesday, July 16, 2008
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Cat invasion
Stop the presses! Two small cats have adopted the Dunces.

Several months have now passed since Zosi's untimely death in January, and we finally decided that we were ready to admit someone else into our household. Somehow we decided that this time around, we would see if we could adopt a pair of cats (I know, it's a slippery slope towards us becoming "crazy cat ladies"). Possibly even kittens. So we made a journey to North London Cats Protection, the same place we adopted from before, to see who was looking for a home.

When we arrived, there were no kittens around (apparently kitten season = total frenzy), but we were taken straight to a pair of sisters just about a year old. It was pretty clear from the start that they would be moving into our house - one of them was extremely friendly and sociable (although this could always just be "GET ME OUT OF HERE" behavior), and the other one was much more hesitant but too curious to hide away. We couldn't just take them home right away - Cats Protection has a home visit policy. So we had to wait a couple of days for one of their volunteers to come by the house and make sure it was ready for cats, and also make sure that we were aware of the various important things about cat care, introducing the cats to a new place, and so on. Of course this went fine.

On Wednesday we went to collect them (in pouring rain), and brought them back to the living room, which would be their home until they became comfortable there. One of the cats (the sociable one, of course) was ready to be let out right away - totally confident in exploring the room and its various shelves and surfaces, even begging for attention, nudging us and purring. The other was much more nervous - going straight under the recliner and cowering there for quite a while. Although eventually she made it out, carefully exploring the room and even more carefully approaching us.

We had a few people over in the next couple of days, and neither cat seemed particularly bothered. So we let them into the rest of the house on Saturday. Again the same kind of behavior, fitting their personalities. {explore, jump, meow, purr} vs {carefully explore, scurry, hide, peek out}. There is also a lot of cat-on-cat chasing and play-fighting, and it actually seems like the cautious one is slightly dominant (although they clearly like each other best of all).

We have also been agonizing over their names! Not easy at all, and we couldn't really do the same thing we did with Zosi whose name was derived from an interesting saint whose saint's day was the same as the day we adopted her. Well, we could have - after all, we could have chosen from any of the 120 Martyrs of China who are collectively celebrated on that day. But we weren't really keen on any of their adopted western names (mostly biblical) nor did we want to try for Chinese names given our lack of knowledge of Chinese phonology. So we headed in a very different direction. First of all, the little, slightly timid gray one also has incredibly soft fur, so we called her Goya. This is actually not based on the name of the Spanish painter, but is Mrs. Dunce's childhood word for extremely soft things one might like to stroke (Dunce family equivalent might be spelled something like "hih"). The more outgoing one, vaguely Siamese in appearance (and also somewhat resembling a ring-tailed monkey), was much harder. Eventually she chose a Japanese girl's name, Kumi. At least to us it has some sound-symbolism related to her personality, and also some non-coincidental resemblance to the phonology of "monkey". And according to some of the "name meaning" websites (which might just be junk), the name Kumiko (from which Kumi is derived) means "companion child"/"drawing together" - a nice link with her sociable nature - and also derives from (ku) "long time", (mi) "beautiful" and (ko) "child". Anyway all this rambling and no pictures yet! So without further delay:

Kumi on the bookshelf
kumi.jpg

Goya on the bookshelf
goya.JPG

Together on the bookshelf
both.JPG

beasts
Wednesday, July 16, 2008 12:54:55 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [4]  |