This is my cat:
Fashionable bow tie from Oskar and Klaus
His name is Winjamin Failclaw. Originally, his name was just Win. I adopted him at a shelter event named for a music festival. I’d seen The Arcade Fire at that festival and their vocalist is named Win. Yeah, it’s a stretch. It also wasn’t sufficient.
Just like people, cats respond better when you call them by their formal name rather than their nickname, so Win needed a longer name. “Winston” would be fine, I suppose, but I preferred “Winjamin” as I have a friend named Benjamin. In my experience, three syllables are ideal for scolding-names, so this was a huge improvement.
Winjamin still has his claws, but he’s not particularly good at using them. Or, rather, he’s good at deploying them but he struggles when it’s time to retract them. He tends to get one of them hung up in whatever he’s sharpening his claws on and then look around with a “As God as my witness, I have no idea how this happened, can you help me?” look on his face. It was at this point that “Failclaw” was added to his name.
He was four or five years old when I adopted him and I don’t have a lot of information on his history. He was getting over an infection in one of his legs when I brought him home, and his hips are a little displaced, so he’s not particularly limber. The folks at the shelter must have been giving him something because he walked reasonably well when we got him home, but soon afterwards he was limping badly. He’s healed up nicely, thank you for asking, but he’s not a champion climber. The notches on his ear suggest that either he was neutered when feral, or he’d been in a few scraps.
He’s one of the kindest animals I’ve ever encountered. He’s a little stand-offish but once he settles in to have his ears scratched, you’re not going to be going anywhere for a while. Some nights he sleeps with us, other nights he runs wild with the Red Velvet, our youngest cat. They play a lot and he’s a good sport about losing. That’s a good thing, as he loses pretty much every time.
Oh, and he loves the red laser dot. I mean, I’ve never seen an animal who loves the laser like he does. One time, he jumped over to the neighbor’s porch and wouldn’t come back. We didn’t really want to climb over on to their porch and he wouldn’t respond to calling or food or anything…until Nicole thought to bring out the laser. We had him back in a heartbeat after that.
My favorite thing about Mr. Failclaw is that he’s incredibly affectionate towards me. When I get home from work, he trots over to the door and raises his nose up and meows quietly until I reach down and pet him. I don’t believe I’m projecting human emotions on to him, or at least not doing so without good cause. The fact that an animal with whom communication is limited appears to feel genuine affection towards me is one of the things that makes me feel like I’m doing something right.
So…that’s my cat. He’s a good kitty. I wanted to say something nice about him before I went down the rabbit hole of a Halloween story and then….November.