Monday, August 18, 2003
 

Ditto reminds me that his semi-adopted kitty, Sophie, also had a long string of names. Oddly, I had forgotten that. I remembered the cat, and it all comes back to me now (though I think that Sophia . . . Mahler was the most of that I could have come up with; I remembered it as "Agrippa" rather than "Agrippina").

The origins of Alice's names: Originally, I was threatening to name her Dwight, regardless of gender. For the first week or so I had her, I just called her "kitty." At that time, I didn't know if I would get to keep her, I was afraid of getting too attached (which, in truth, probably took all of ten seconds, anyway), and I wanted to observe her personality. I had planned on naming a cat Quentin at some point, after the Faulkner character; that name could have been for either a male or female cat (since it applies to both genders in the Compson family). Alice, though, didn't strike me as a Quentin. So, one day, I was lying on the futon, staring unhappily at the stacks of unpacked books all around me (this is before I moved). I have an old copy of Alice in Wonderland that my grandmother gave me; it was on the table right in front of me. I realized then that my curious, inquisitive kitty was most certainly an Alice, one who would dart down a rabbit hole and enter a "curiouser and curiouser" world without batting an eyelash. Also, in the books, you get the impression that Alice is a spoiled kid, and this Alice is just a teensy-tiny bit on the rotten side. She continues to act like an Alice, and that name was definitely the right choice for her.

I added Dwight as her middle name right away, in honor of my first choice (Zora, after Zora Neale Hurston, was the next major contender). Cooter got thrown in there when a friend was over one night, and we were joking about our cracker status. All hail Dukes of Hazzard. Pedrolina is something of a family name; my great-uncle names all stray cats Pedro (for reasons known only to him) until they have kittens, at which point they become Pedrolina. Scarlett is because this cat is an eyelash-batting little flirt. Temperance, after a little girl in the Mrs Bradley Mystery! series, who was a pleasant, smart, industrious kid. Yekaterina, because Alice looks more like a Russian Blue every day (her eyes are starting to turn green, and her pawpads are turning blue). The nickname for Yekaterina is Katya, so I like the "cat" sound in that. Yekaterina is one of my favorite Russian names, anyway. DuBois, for Blanche DuBois in Streetcar. Again, my cat is a flirt extraordinaire: when I picked her up at the vet's office, I asked the vet if she'd been flirting with the staff. The vet replied, simply, "Yep." Also, if there was ever an animal who would utter the words "I have always depended upon the kindness of strangers," this is her. Consider: She had a cat-mother, and someone adopted her. That someone moved and abandoned her. A mother and daughter took her in briefly but didn't keep her. Then I adopted her from the parking lot. Oh, and she would completely swoon over Brando in the film version.

I'm back chez moi, in my little townhouse, which I <3. I'm reading pedagogical handouts, courtesy of our writing director. Blah, blah, blah.

Elvisette philosophized at 1:06 PM