The Other One

For those of you who knew me back in high school (or before), you will be amazed to know that my cat Blackie, a.k.a. "The Other One," is still alive and well, at age 19 1/2 (above picture taken last week in Florida). Blackie is living proof that the key to extraordinary feline longevity is little or no veterinary care, combined with a steady diet of discount cat food.

Blackie isn't even a black cat, so the name is sort of absurd. She's what my grandmother called a "brindle cat," which is pretty much your standard brown-striped alley cat. Her name was originally Ginger Snap (I used to name all my cats after foods, for reasons that now escape me), but somehow the name never stuck. Blackie's always been sort of the Cinderella of the family, only without the glass slipper or the prince. She was a stray kitten my dad found in a parking lot when she was about 4 months old, half-starved and streaked with white paint. The day she came home, her breath smelled like pizza, because some construction workers had fed her some of their lunch. Their intentions were good, but she had all sorts of digestive troubles as a result. Let's just say it's no coincidence that there aren't any pizza-flavored cat foods.

My mom was rather irritated that dad had brought home a cat, and one with diareaha at that, without her permission. Even more annoyed by this turn of events was Coconut, a.k.a. Whitey, our huge, dazzling half-persian (we think) with bright green eyes. For the next 18 years, poor Ginger Snap would be the poor step-sister to Whitey, a long-haired white cat who at one point weighed 30 pounds and pretty much demanded the attention of all humans in his wake. Poor Blackie. It was like being Ashley Simpson, only without the nose job, or the awful lip-synching.

Anyway, when my grandmother was visiting when I was in 9th grade or so, she started calling Coconut "Whitey," because he was white, and the name sort of stuck. Ginger Snap, who at that point was primarily known as "The Other One," became known as Blackie. We might as well've called her "non-Whitey." It's pretty sad.

My late grandparents, for all they doted on their animals, never gave pets anything but the most painfully obvious names, usually reflecting their gender and/or species. For instance, my grandfather Kennedy had an old beagle named Boy. As far as anyone could tell, Paw-paw loved Boy more than any of his own children, and certainly more than all of his grandchildren, creatures he didn't really see the point of, considering none of us could be bothered to fish a dead duck out of a pond.

Boy, as you might have guessed, was a male dog (good thing it wasn't a female dog ...). They also had a chiuhauaha (sp?) that barked constantly, and was thus named Arfy. There was a cockateel called Lady Bird (both gender and species) and an orange Tom cat named ... Tom. All things considered, it's amazing my grandfather didn't name his kids "Hey You," or maybe "Stop That!"

In an unrelated tanget, my grandfather's own father actually named himself. True story, or so he swore. His father was the youngest of 15 kids, born somewhere in the hills of rural Alabama. The Civil War was going on, or had just ended, so maybe his parents couldn't afford a new name, or maybe their mind was just elsewhere. They called the youngest one, simply, "Babe," until a man from the Census Bureau came around, and asked the names of all the residents of their farm. He said that Babe wasn't a given name, so asked my great-grandfather, age 5, to run around the yard and think of what he'd like his Offical Name to be for the purposes of the Federal Government.

He came back and said that he was to be called John William Harrison Kennedy, unwittingly naming himself after not one, but two U.S. presidents. If I'd been asked to pick my own name at that age, you would know me as "Wonder Woman Sparkle Pony," or possibly Princess Leia. Maybe my 5-year-old great-grandfather was an ardent supporter of the Whig party, of which William "Tippecanoe" Harrison was the last member to hold the Executive Branch.

Anyway, the point being, Blackie is (amazingly) alive and well, as is Hugo, my cat from college who now lives with my folks. Yesterday, they got a new kitten, who they rescued from a neighbor who was about to send her to the pound. They're calling her "Lucky."

And this concludes another chapter of, Aren't My Cats Fascinating? Tune in next time when I tell you about how Francis did that cute thing he does ....