I got a cat and yes, the title of this post reflects his
name.
I believe if you are going to have an animal, you should be creative
with the name. His full name is actually
Izzie Cutie Froggy Socks. I can’t take
credit for the full name (and probably don’t want to). My daughters, 5 and 7, came up with pieces of
the name. My dad came up with Socks
because the cat has white paws that contrast with his gray fur. The girls came up with Cutie and Froggy for …whatever
reasons. Actually, my 7 year old came up
with Cutie and makes sense since the cat is a cutie. My 5 year old came up with Froggy and maybe
that makes sense because she’s 5 years old.
When I was growing up, we always had pets and mostly
cats. We had one dog, Sam the Basset – “Dog
of the Desert, Keen of Eye, Swift of Foot” as my dad used to describe him (is it
any wonder where I get my pet name fetish?),
and plenty of cats; too many to name and names to embarrassing to repeat
here. When I was on my own, I never had
any pets mainly because I lived in apartments that didn’t allow them and I
couldn’t afford them (which was more the reason than the bylaws of the
apartments I lived in). When I was
married to my first wife, we ended up with two cats and somehow I got custody of them after we divorced I didn’t mind,
though. When I was dating the woman who
would become my second wife, I had to give the cats back to the first wife
because the soon-to-be-second wife was very allergic to them. It was hard but I was in love and the house
was much cleaner after the cats were gone.
So fast forward almost a decade and I am now a cat owner
once again. I considered a dog and would
actually love to have one. With my job,
however, I travel and I can’t afford to put him in a kennel every time I have
to hit the road. Outside of that getting
real expensive, it just wouldn’t be fair to the dog. With a cat, however, I could be gone a week
and as long as I had a continuous feeder and water, the cat would be fine.
When I first brought the cat home, I couldn’t help shaking
the notion that he was a child. I would
tip toe around him while he was sleeping and if I had to go out, I would hurry
back to make sure he was okay. Much like
the times I did that with my children, the cat was fine too. (That’s a joke,
folks…I never left my kids alone unless it was an emergency trip to the beer
store and when I did that, I gave them a broken bottle to protect themselves
with).
People may think I got the cat for my girls, but that’s not
necessarily true. Sure, they wanted one and knew they could get one now that
they had two houses to go to and one of them didn’t have a highly allergic
adult living in it. Still, I got the cat
for me. Pets are great companions
regardless of what type of animal they are…although I suppose living with a
grizzly bear might be tricky…especially getting it to go in a litter box but I
guess for bears you would have to have indoor woods because you know what they
say about bears and woods. Huh? Huh?
Get it? See what I did
there? Heh…anyway…
Now I have little Izzie Socks to join me on my journey to
the next destination in life and I’m glad he’s here. I can now talk to him and it not be as weird
as when I was just talking to nobody (but maybe only by a little bit). Not that it’s all fun and games. The darn cat barely lets me get any typing
done as he likes to crawl up my leg, onto my lap and then onto my desk. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to
retype this because he ran across the keyboard.
At one point, my spell checker told me I should have gotten a bird.
Maybe he wouldn’t need so much attention if he had another
cat to play with. Maybe I’ll get six
more. Nah, if I did that, my destination would surely be known: Alone.
Forever.
Except for the seven cats and probably never seeing the top
of my desk again.
