Our little leopard

People tend to be confused by our kitten's name. "Why would you name a girl cat Rocky?" is the principle line of inquiry. The long answer is that we originally named her Punk Rock, which we thought was hilarious, but it turned out not to have much of a ring to it, so we took it down to Rocky. The short answer is WHO THE FUCK CARES. It's not like we acquired a human girl baby and then turned around and named her Stan. Cats don't think about whether their names are gender-appropriate; in fact, at this point I am pretty sure all Rocky thinks about is biting the shit out of me, preferably when I'm sleeping peacefully.

That being said, you can imagine my surprise when I took Rocky in for her first round of vaccinations on Friday and the vet walked in the door, took one look at her and said, "You know that's a male cat, right?" Now, I'm no expert on cat genitalia, but when I look down there I don't see anything I associate with maleness, so I never questioned that Rocky was female. As it turns out, male kittens can be pretty hard to peg, being in the pre-ball-dropping stage and all; what gave away Rocky to the vet was his size, which is apparently quite unusual for a kitten of either gender. At twelve weeks of age he weighs almost six pounds. I have no idea what this means, but apparently it's weird. The vet told me he's likely part Maine Coon--I had to ask how that was spelled because it sounded like a racial slur--which would account for his unusual bulk. When I got home I ran a Google Image search on Maine Coons, and the first picture that popped up was of a woman holding what looks like a fucking cheetah:

Avid readers of this blog may recall that I originally wanted a dog. Not a big dog; I wanted a bulldog, a little tough guy who wouldn't take up too much space but would help me feel safe when I was home alone. I did a lot of thinking about the protective merits of bulldogs versus Maine Coons Saturday night, when I was sitting on the couch wallowing in my miserable head cold when I heard a woman SCREAMING HER LUNGS OUT across the street. I thought everything a seasoned Angeleno would think: 1) It's some drunk idiot walking through the neighborhood with her friends, who are encouraging her to act like an asshole; 2) it's someone having extremely kinky sex; 3) it's an actress who just got cast in a horror movie and is practicing her death scene. But then it just went on and on. It was awful. Finally I got dressed and went out to the street--no small feat while running a fever--only to find a middle-aged man standing in the middle of the road for no apparent reason. Assuming he was also trying to ascertain the source of the screaming, which at this point had continued unabated for ten minutes, I asked him, "Should one of us call the cops?" And he looked right at me and said, "That's a baby." I shook my head: "That is NOT a baby." "Yes it is," he said. "Don't call the police. It's only a baby."

Thoroughly creeped out by this exchange, I bolted back upstairs, locked all the doors, and called 911. I'd never called 911 before, but I can't even describe to you how blood-curdling the screaming was; it sounded like the woman was being beaten to death. Within ten minutes, the operator had called me back to say, "The police are there, but they don't hear the woman screaming." Of course she had stopped screaming about five minutes after I finally decided to call. I apologized for wasting everyone's time, and the operator was really nice about it, and now it's Monday and there's no sign that anyone was murdered on the block over the weekend, so I guess there was some reasonable explanation.

I think I would've felt better in general if I'd had a bulldog sleeping at my feet throughout this ordeal. But if Rocky attains anything remotely approaching Maine Coon girth, he might be able to do the job -- if you saw a housecat that size, wouldn't you think twice? I don't mean about your potential evildoing. I mean about what kind of god would create such a thing. There you'd be, intending to do whatever it is people do to generate twenty minutes of awful female screaming, but you'd be frozen in your tracks staring at our four-foot-long cat. Who, if his current behavior is any indication, would be trying to lick your face while purring at a volume loud enough to vibrate your spine into jelly.

The irony of all of this is that Henry didn't want us to get any pet at all, but he settled for a kitten over a dog because at least that way he'd be spared the trouble of a large, hairy, high-maintenance creature in his personal space. HA. Be careful what you wish for.