Milk the cat
The cats and I managed to survive standing around in zero-degree wind chill for two hours Monday morning and are now spayed. Roxy was crazed from the anesthetic, when i released her from her carrier, she ran around the room like it was electrified, variously falling down or slamming her head into the walls. I should have left her in the carrier, but she had been in there several hours and was supposed to be well past the point that she could come out. But she is small for her age and is normally really energetic, so maybe they gave her too much kitty chloroform. She eventually ran out of steam and laid down, but not without injury. She had a big red welt under her eye from running into the door. I felt really bad for her, but she seems to be okay now and is coming around. She even seems to be a little more tame than pre-surgery, hopping onto the couch with me and allowing us to pet her.
The other cat we took in is doing fine, sans histrionics. She has been sleeping a lot on the top floor of the house, where nobody will bug her. We've been trying to think of a name and wanted to continue the recent trend of antiquated proper nouns we've been ascribing to the other cats we've taken in. So far the calico cats we've had have been named: Gladys, Lucy, Flossie and Roxy. I like these old lady names (though Roxy has a slatternly bent to it) and the new cat has a similar deportment as Gladys, making her a prime target of some doily-fringed moniker of old.
With a little googling, we found lists of the most popular baby names by decade. Focusing on the names of the 1910's, I was surprised to find not only every one of the above cat names, but countless others that were downright bizarre. You know how people like to poke fun at nontraditional "black" baby names? This list proves how there really is nothing new under the sun.
The list is taken from some kind of database that lists each name by actual number of babies born that decade. Of our already-named cats, Gladys leads the pack with 4,778, Lucy has 1,564, Flossie has 328, and Roxie (close enough!) with 166. There's a lot of good old-lady cat names that we'd heard of on the list, but a whole slew of them were unknown to me. A sampling:
Avis, Bernadine, Birdie, Bulah, Dessie, Dovie, Effie, Elda, Elfrieda, Elnora, Era, Erna, Essie, Eula Nettie , Exie, Fern, Florine, Floy, Germaine, Gussie, Hattie, Hertha, Hettie, Ila, Iola, Iona, Jettie, Juanita, Leola, Leota, Letha, Ludie, Luella, Lula, Mafalda, Mamie, Mattie, Mazie, Melba, Merle, Mittie, Mozelle, Myrtice, Myrtie, Myrtis, Nedra, Neva, Novella, Ocie, Ola, Oleta, Ollie, Oma, Ona, Ora, Orpha, Otilia, Ouida, Palma, Pearlie, Retha, Reva, Rilla, Theda, Tressie, Vada, Verda, Vesta, Wava, Zella, Zona
Those are just some that caught my eye, there's a lot more on that list. And these aren't individual examples, either; the list excludes names with less than 29 instances. My personal favorites are Elfrieda and Floy, though neither seems applicable to this cat. We've been rotating a series of names off the list, since she wouldn't know her name from a hole in the ground anyway.
