Introducing...

We have two new furred friends in our home these days. Heidi passed away peacefully in my arms, a well-lived elderly feline, during the summer of 2017. Alec the Cockatiel passed away with no apparent suffering in February of 2018. He, too, was likely an elderly bird.

Well aware of my love for animals, my family encouraged me to look for more critters to adopt. Though I enjoy many species of animals, including reptiles and amphibians, I felt my choice had to be one that Ken also was comfortable with. We looked online at Feline Rescue, an organization that specializes in finding homes for cats. We searched through their photographs and fell in love with a litter of orange tabbies that needed homes. It is unusual to see a whole litter of orange tabbies; the genes that produce orange, black and white coloration tend to be found together, so it would be more common to see, say, a litter with two calicos, two tortoiseshells and two tabbies. Orange or red coloration is linked to the X chromosome in cats, though it is more common to see male orange cats than female orange cats. That may be because females are XX and males are XY, so other colors wouldn't mask the orange in males. In this particular litter, there were two deep orange tabbies and two lighter, more buff (or cream, or dilute) tabbies, all with medium length fur and fluffy long tails. We went to the foster family's home to meet the whole litter, eventually settling on adopting two females, one orange and one buff, who seemed to get along well with one another. By the time we brought them to their new home with us they had been spayed and vaccinated.

Have you ever tried naming your pets? Have you noticed how we each choose names in different ways? My husband, Ken, has always liked using human names. We've had cats named Kaci, Matthew, Leonardo, Gretchen and Heidi. Our dog was named after one of Ken's relatives, Lindy. Alec the cockatiel was named after a human actor. I, on the other hand, also enjoy naming pets with descriptive adjectives, like Smoky for a grey cat. Shortly after we were married, our very first cat became Izzie, named after a character in the “Roots” TV series. The cat my college roommate and I took care of was named Smog—a grey cat that didn't seem to fit the name Smoky. I put my proverbial foot down and insisted our orange and buff females be named with descriptive adjectives. So, we assembled a list of ideas. Tangerine, Mango, Sunny, Melonie, Ginger, Marmelade. One day we laughed when Ken attempted to walk down the basement stairs with one of the kittens walking around and between his feet. “We should call her Squash,” he said dryly. I laughed and added the word to my growing list of potential names. Finally, we agreed upon Mango for the darker orange kitty and Butternut for the buff kitty. As in squash.

Mango and Butternut each have different personalities. So far, we've noticed that Mango is a go-getter, one who acts first and thinks later. She'll attack anything that moves, catches a ball well, and is attracted to things that squeak. Butternut, on the other hand, looks for movement patterns. She'll intently watch something go back and forth for several minutes before she finally decides to pounce on it. Her aim is excellent, but she's not fast. Will she ever learn how to jump up without knocking something down? I suspect not; she tends to be a bit clumsy, for a cat. Butternut prefers toys that are red or stringy. Science may argue with me on that one. It is said that cats see the world in blues and grays, not being able to distinguish red, orange, yellow or green. Perhaps theirs is a texture issue: they seem to like soft fluffy toys versus hard bouncy ones. Both kitties enjoy the smallest size of pom-poms, the ones that fit nicely between their lips, Butternut the sparkly ones, Mango the plain ones. Neither cat meows; they sort of coo or whimper. It's a tiny, high-pitched, delicate sound that doesn't fit their size. Butternut likes to do this at three o'clock in the morning, while jumping up to surfaces on which she doesn't belong. Is she trying to get our attention? Is she looking for something? Is she looking for Mango?  We've taken to getting up and closing the door on them so we can continue sleeping all night.

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