Pleasant to Hear When They Caterwaul

Last night a friend and I drove down to the city...and we sort of came back with a cat. "Sort of" in the sense that we did. I was in the market for a pet mouse, so we went to Petco, which was out of mice. We then went to Petsmart, with the idea of simply looking at the mice; our Petsmart carries females only, and I wasn't interested. On a whim, we walked past the cat adoption center. The kittens were posturing and playing, and three female adult cats were housed separately. The first was a little deep ginger tabby with a white nose and bib; the second was a 9-year-old free fat calico, whom I briefly considered as she slept, but rejected upon seeing that NO was checked next to "Plays well with other cats:".

"Oh, look," Emma said. "This one's got two different colored eyes." At that moment, I knew I was doomed. A few months ago I had joked to another friend, "If I get another cat, I want a girl with two different colored eyes, and I will name her Zowie Bowie." (Coincidentally, the calico later woke up and revealed that she, too, was odd-eyed.) We filled out the forms, paid, and she spent the car trip curled around Emma's neck.

She's the tiniest cat I've ever seen. The vet who spayed and vaccinated her estimated her to be about 9 months old. This makes her still decidedly kittenish; she discovered that clocks tick and spent five minutes diligently trying to catch the second hand. She's got a miniature little body, skinny as a rail, and she's completely white except for a grey spot on her forehead and her little black nose. Her head is so small that it seems to be all eyes, which only accentuates the difference between the blue and the green eye.

She arrived home and instantly stuck a curious nose in Bob's face, who recoiled as if she sprayed acid. She thoroughly explored the house, acquainted herself with Emma, Joe, and me, and played delightedly with a catnip-stuffed giraffe toy that Bob has ignored wholeheartedly for the past three months. Bob reacted by grumpily cuddling each of the humans and fiercely chewing the previously-detested giraffe.

The new kitty even already got in trouble; she decided to try to claw out a window screen, which is the one cat behavior I will not tolerate. One of my parents' cats makes herself cat doors by ripping holes in the nylon screens of any window they leave open. Fortunately, the screens in my apartment are old metal things that could keep elephants inside.

After some deliberation, she was indeed christened Zowie, with the provision that it should be spelled however I feel like spelling it that day. Variations may include Zoe or Zooey, or even Xoey, I suppose. She came very close to being called Mir (yes, like the space station), but I couldn't pass up the Bowie reference, predictable as it may be. Besides, "Mir" came about when Joe suggested Shitsmear (I wish I was kidding), and then decided that Mir was reserved for his next cat.

Unlike Bob, who talks all the time, Zowie rarely meows, though when she does, it's high-pitched and girly (and thus indistinguishable from Bob's voice). She and Bob get along all right, though each has decided that Allison Belongs To Me, which makes for interesting sleeping arrangements--Zowie by my head, Bob on my legs. I'm hoping that they decide to be friends, or, as I explained to Emma, eunuch lovers, if I may use the term loosely.

If I can find my digital camera, I'll see if I can get them to stop growling at each other long enough to pose. They're really quite comical, my white cats--Zowie sleek and tiny and odd-eyed, Bob fluffy and gigantic and polydactyl.