Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Turns out Ginger Rogers Is Really Robert Benchley

How could we have gotten it so wrong? Four grown women and a man examined that fiesty kitty and all of us concluded that he was a she.  I had been waffling on the name. Why not a literary name? @PhoebeFay suggested Dorothy Parker. I almost called the Vet to have it changed on her/his records, but I didn't.  It's just as well.  But for now I'm thinking Robert Benchley, notorious liar, humorist, writer, actor, member of the Algonquin Round Table. Friend of Dorothy Parker.

I'll call him Bob.  The House Call Vet said he's a holly terror of feistiness.  The Vet had to wear his kitteh gauntlet to handle Bob.  Now I want to rename Marley, but Bob plus Marley makes BobMarley, so...

Bob had terrible personal hygiene.  Dirty ears.  Really dirty ears.  Ten days worth of ear wash and ointment dirty ears.  Bob got the whole shebang of immunizations and a second round in three weeks. Worming too.  Bob got wormed. The indignity of it.  Then in a few short months Bob will get neutered.  I don't think it's going to change Bobs personality much.  He's oddly self confident for a dirty guy abandoned in someone else's garage, then passed around a couple of times before landing here.

Bob, I want to make a deal with you.  Once I get your ears clean, you better step it up.  Bob purrs really loud and likes to hang out around my neck.  This disturbs Marley.  We'll work it out.

13 comments:

Unknown said...

Congratulations on your sweet kitteh, Utah. He's quite cute and he's lucky to have found you!

lisahgolden said...

The whole sex identification of a cat thing IS perplexing. I had a male cat named Phoebe. He didn't mind, but the other cats in the hood made fun of him.

I'm glad Bob is settling in. Nothing like a cat stole.

PENolan said...

Also happy to hear he's settling in - and you could always call him Benchley to avoid the Bob Marley thing.

Fran said...

Ha! He reminds me of the Cheshire cat from Alice in Wonderland.

We used to have an orange striped tabby-- we named him Tigger.... not wildly imaginative.... but the wonderful thing about tigger is that Tigger's a wonderful thing!

My favorite cat name was a friend who had a cat so fat he looked like a bowling ball- so they named him *Brunswick*.

The Blog Fodder said...

Cat stoles are wonderful. My mom used to have a huge yellow tom who would leap from the floor and wrap himself around her neck. Enjoy Bob and Marley and why not pets named Bob Marley?

Just noticed your anti-anti-abortion "stamp" and would add that the first time a man gets pregnant, abortions will be available at drive through windows.

LeAnn said...

At first I thought you were saying he is "Jaws"
I've never been good at sexing cats either. Took my 2 in to be neutered and found they both needed spaying.
I love you cat stories and Bob is lucky, with that head pattern i would have named him Tiresias

Nan said...

I thought he had a definite boy face. Gingers tend toward toms anyway, so it's not much of a surprise.

I got a kitten once from the North Hollywood Animal Shelter that had been checked out by people who really should have known what they were looking at, they made me pre-pay for spaying, but by the time the beast was old enough for neutering, it was pretty clear Zonker had balls. Until they hit adolescence and the testicles become impossible to not see, kittens can be really hard to sex.

Utah Savage said...

Thanks for not making me feel like such a fool about not seeing that Ms Rogers/Parker is really Mr Baker/Benchley.

The Vet thinks he's extremely feisty, meaning he's a slasher/shredder. I do have one wound that's bound to leave a scar. Now that Bob has hypnotized Marley and has taken several laps around the walls working his way up to the ceiling, he's outside terrorizing the squirrels and Norweigen rats that are our outside wild life. Good luck with that Bob, because that's the real reason I agreed to keep you. I thought you were a female and would be a good "mouser."

MRMacrum said...

We had the pleasure for 15 years of sharing our lives with an orange cat. His name was Bob also. Imay have to rethink my position on reincarnation.

Not much beats the calm of a cat purring in your ear.

Utah Savage said...

MRMcrumb Bob has a huge purr and a very loud voice. He plays rough with Marley and neither of them has gotten mad or hurt yet. They seem to love each other. And Bob adores me, of course, I'm getting him hooked on the good stuff. Both he and Marley seem to be stoners. I'm now leaving the camera out of its case, so I can catch them at their antics.

Utah Savage said...

And for what it's worth, I think Marley is the Reincarnation of Geeky my Chocolate Lab mix who died about the time Marley was born. He always wanted to be a lap dog and she thinks she's a guard dog.

Oso said...

Cute cat. We just lost my youngest daughter's cat Felix after 17 years.

Felix slipped badly the last few months, she passed quickly while we stroked her and talked to her, and cried and prayed.

Joseph Dewey said...

I like monosyllabic pet names that have a bunch of meaning to them. Very cool blogs.