AND HER NAME IS .....

She arrived a week ago. The nano-second we opened her crate, she stood briefly in the kitchen, bathed in sunlight shining through the front door, then bolted down to the basement and hid. 

And hid. 

And hid some more.

“She” is a seven-year-old female short-hair kitty who was flown from a Florida Keys shelter to New Hampshire on a private jet with other cats and dogs who were also being adopted. She was understandably skittish. She also did not have a name. 

“The naming of Cats is a difficult matter,

It isn’t just one of your holiday games;

When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT 

NAMES….”

“What about Tilly?” Mr. Wonderful suggested a few days before she arrived. I preferred Petunia or PolkaDot, but said, “Let’s wait until we get her home. She will tell us her name.”

And actually after she came home to us, I briefly considered naming her “Stealth,” in honor of the radar-deflecting bomber that snuck in and out of Russia without ever being seen. Because even though she used her litter box fastidiously and ate every morsel of Premium Fussie Cat food on a paper plate in the kitchen, we never spotted her anywhere.

We looked. Oh Lord, we looked, and usually found her hiding under a dresser or behind a chair. We were always looking down too until one morning I noticed her sitting in a high window well in my exercise room. She was purring away in the catbird seat. 

“But I tell you, a cat needs a name that’s particular,

A name that’s peculiar, and more dignified, 

Else how can she keep up her tail perpendicular,

Or spread out her whiskers, or cherish her pride?”

Slowly, hourly, steadily, the iceberg has begun to melt. She still considers our basement rec room to be her private condo and welcomes our visits to pet and coddle her. But with a little coaxing, she’s now discovered Oriental rugs to scratch and a living room sofa for morning naps.

Mr. Wonderful has introduced her to Fox News. Few things make him happier (other than a one-putt that drops in the hole) than sipping his coffee while watching “Fox and Friends.” Now he has company, as he tucks the kitty next to him and brushes her. (Not to worry, my friends: she watches MSNBC too.)

“But above and beyond there’s still one name left over,

And that is the name that you never will guess;

The name that no human research can discover —

But THE CAT HERSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.

When you notice a cat in profound meditation,

The reason, I tell you, is always the same:

Her mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation

Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of her name:

Her ineffable effable

Effanineffable

Deep and inscrutable singular name.”

It’s okay if she purrs contentedly while contemplating her own singular name. But it quickly became apparent to us since her arrival here in the Wells woods that she is an affectionate kitty who loves to be petted and tickled behind the ears. She is already giving us laughs and joy. She has lightened our lives!

And her name is:  SUNSHINE.

———

With thanks to T.S. Eliot for his 1939 collection, “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.”