DECEMBER 02, 2007

I get emails asking what kind of cat Zola is but, until recently, I could never answer that question. You see, I got Zola from a friend in college who was trying to find homes for a litter of kittens so Zola's origins were unknown and I figured always would be, which was frustrating since Zola's so phenomenal that we always wanted another cat like her. But awhile ago, some friends of Ross' came to visit and the first thing one of them said upon seeing Zola was, "wow, you have a Maine Coon!"

Ross and I, we looked at her perplexed and asked, "we have a what?" At which point she was surprised to find we'd never heard of the Maine Coon breed, much less knew that Zola was one. But after looking Maine Coons up and seeing the breed description and photos, we knew without a doubt that Zola is Maine Coon, which explained her unique traits that had always puzzled us. Like her obsessive love of playing with water, her ability to use her paws like hands, and the fact she never meows but instead makes a noise that sounds like she's saying "myrrh" (trilled R). Turns out Zola's looks and quirks are characteristic of Maine Coons, which just made us want another one all the more since having a beautiful, loving cat that's funny and smarter than most humans is the greatest.

So, a few months ago when we decided to get a kitten we definitely wanted a Maine Coon but, since we were opposed to buying one from a breeder or store, we started looking on animal shelter web sites. Weeks passed without finding one, however, and we started to think we never would. But then today, with torrential rain pouring down and hurricane force winds battering the state, I settled at my computer to pass time with web surfing and, wouldn't ya know, I checked the Oregon Humane Society site and there she was, a 5 month old Maine Coon kitten. So despite flooded streets and wind snapping trees in two, we trudged into the storm and boated, er, drove to the Humane Society.

After making our way through the cat area of the shelter several times without finding the kitten we'd seen online, I started to worry she'd been adopted in the time it took us to get there, but we asked a staff member about "peaches" (the kitten's name at the shelter) and discovered that she was in the medical quarantine area. Turns out kitten was born to a stray, which made for a rough start to life, and then caught a respiratory infection at the shelter and became extremely ill but, after being treated with antibiotics, kitten was recovering and being kept in quarantine so she wouldn't get sick again from the other cats.

The staff member went and got kitten so that we could meet her and, oh my god, when I saw the woman heading toward us with a little black and grey ball of fur in her arms, that was it. I took one look at that kitten and my heart melted. Her fur was dingy and matted, she was skin and bones after being sick, and the poor thing was scared but, when the staff member handed her to me, kitten looked up at me with huge golden eyes and started purring madly, like she knew she'd finally found a home where she would be spoiled and loved, and that little kitten was right.

So after filling out the adoption paperwork and being interviewed to make sure we're ok people who understand the responsibilities of pet ownership, we put our new little kitten in a carrier and headed home with the newest member of our family. Yes, we haz a kitten! That's our scruffy little girl to the left there.

Unfortunately, since kitten is recovering from an infection we have to keep her quarantined for awhile at home so our other cats don't get sick, which means kitten is staying in our spare bedroom for now. She's scared and overwhelmed after having gone from living in a small cage at a shelter to having her own bedroom and she hides when we go in to see her but, if we sit down and wait, kitten comes back out and makes her way over to us and, once she realizes that all we want is to love her, she throws herself in our arms and purrs so hard it vibrates her whole body and melts our hearts completely.

But now comes the difficult task of naming kitten. Her name at the shelter was "peaches" but we're not keen on that and, what's more, it really doesn't fit her so we need to find a better name. Ross' first suggestion was Puf, in honour of Fup, the store cat at Powells who passed away recently, but I'm not sure about that one. So, like I always do when naming something, I started throwing out names of literary characters, starting with Harry Potter books, which is where the idea of Luna (Luna Lovegood) came from. And I should've stopped myself before suggesting Luna because Ross loves the name but, given that I always add ie to the end of names, I'd end up calling her Lunie all the time.

So the search for a name continues with some of the contenders being Puf the Magic Kitten, Luna, Nova, Kocka (pronounced Koch-ka, which means '"cat" in Czech), Loshka (variation of Laska, which means "love" in Czech) and I'm sure the list of possibilities will grow but hopefully we'll figure something out before the kitten is full grown and thinks her name is, "hey you."

And for anyone looking for a pet, the site petfinder.com is a great resource. It has a search feature that allows you to specify what city/state you live in and what kind of animal you're looking for - breed, age, gender, etc - then gives you a list of animals in shelters in your area that match your criteria. It's a great way to find the exact kind of pet you want and help an animal in need, since all the pets listed on the site are in shelters.

listening: erasure . reading: --

walk: 0 minutes . weight lost: 12.5 pounds

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