What's In A Name?

I am sitting here tonight with one hot kitty on my lap. That would be Samba. Funny how one is a lap cat when you’re not busy and the other is a lap cat when you are. Mambo’s the busy cat and Samba is the not busy cat, and since typing on a weblog generally means that you are indeed not busy, Samba is the one here now. She’s my little Purr-Purr.

Nicknames for cats are funny. Take Mambo, for instance. We originally came up with the name driving back from the rest of the world on highway 755, around Santa Elena on our way back to Rio Grande City, where we were living. We were all talked out, as a couple can get on an 8-10 hour drive, so we discussed the possiblity of pets. Cats were decidedly better for apartment living. We wanted a male and female cat, so we talked about names, naturally… much as an expecting couple (or even one who wants to be expecting) will discuss names for their future children. Well, the Roma band played a song during football season called Speak Up Mambo. It was an addictive song, especially since all the kids sang. With gusto. Con amor de la musica. This song always found its way into our minds when we least expected it. Like on a long drive. Anyhow, we decided that the boy cat would be named Mambo… naturally that led to a latin-dance-influenced name for the girl cat, so we settled on Samba. Hence the names of our cats: Mambo y Samba.

Once you have a cat, you quickly learn to mutate their name. I mean, the animals don’t respond to it anyhow… so why not have some fun and see what you can come up with? So one day I came home, walked in the door, and called out to Mambo (who is without a doubt our favorite), “Mambodilie-odilie!” which stuck for about two days before being truncated to just “Bodilie” (three syllables: BO-dill-ie” with the emphasis on the BO, of course)… From there we have only digressed… next was Mambo-jo… and the latest encarnation is Mambo-Tom-Bodilie-Jo-Barnes (which has a melody to it, but I won’t sing it here)… so it’s gotten longer for sure.

Samba has had the mis-fortune of getting stuck with the name Bidi or Bidilie as in Beady or Beadily… (work with me here, Bodilie… Bidilie). We don’t bestow the honor of messing with her name much because she is.. not the favorite cat.. I mean, she did bite me pretty bad (on the left pointer finger which EVERYBODY KNOWS is one of the most critical fingers for playing the clarinet since it is at the top of the instrument and seals THE MOST IMPORTANT KEY on the entire instrument!) which cost over $200 in bills for a visit to the clinic (for my finger) and antibiotics (also for my finger). The doctor was worried that the bite had gotten to the joint on my finger which would have been more expensive and more drugs. Alas, I hold no grudges (NO NOT ME–how could I EVER hold a grudge against a CAT?! <–note the use of sarcasm) well, I try not to anyhow. She’s also the more-annoying-shedding-all-over-the-world cat and sometimes it’s just hard to like something which produces all the nice-clothes-consuming never-again-will-we-ever-be-able-to-wear-black fuzz. sheesh.

(Mambo gets brushed (begs to be brushed) several times a day, so his hairs aren’t much of a problem.)

I am going to get the hotter-than-a-heating-pad cat off my lap and do something worthwhile — like sticky-roll all the fuzz off my black clothes.