The J. Bradford Dillon Journal

Allow me to digress into something that only a small number of my minuscule readership will find interesting. I’m about to become a father, which makes a man reflect on a lot of things. Not necessarily deep or wise things, just life in general. I’ve been thinking about my life as I know it, what I like, what I don’t like, and what makes me laugh. I’ve got a couple posts like this coming, so just bear with me, and try to be entertained.

My wife and I have owned just under a dozen cats in our two years of marriage. Before you write me off as one of those creepy cat people who spend hours trying to find the freshest food on the shelf at the petstore, understand that I’m counting the half-a-dozen kittens and mother that we fostered for 4 months. We kept one of the kittens, so that leaves roughly six cats that we’ve kept as our pets, and five that we only kept for a time.

At any rate, cats have really strange habits, and far more personality than any other pet. In order to make sense of their idiosyncrasies, my wife and I have come up with back-stories and explanations for each of them. They are almost as creative as their names. Here are just a few.

Gizmodious the Taker of Souls

Gizmo was our first cat. He came from my good friend Mitch and his wife, who found him wandering their apartment complex. He had a tag that was registered over 30 miles away. They contacted his owner, and were rudely received, so they kept him for a time and then gave him to us, claiming he was “one of the creepiest cats” they had ever seen.

Gizmo liked to stare at you. Gizmo liked to stare deep into your eyes for minutes at a time. At first we thought he was trying to suck our souls out through some kind of psychic power, thus the name. Later, we decided that Gizmo was simply trying to communicate with us his need to be on the road.  He was french, you see, and was trying desperately to get to Canada, to be with other french-speaking felines. About six months ago, Gizmo was out in our backyard enjoying the grass, as he often did, and the mood must have struck him to continue on his journey. We never saw him again.

Au revoir et bonne chance, Gizmo.

Mister Pirate Davis

Pirate was the runt of our foster litter. We found him and his brothers, sisters, and mother (a purebred Russian Korat) in the back of the petstore where I was working in Atlanta. We raised them in the bathroom of our small studio apartment, for several months. When we found them, the kittens’ eyes were barely open, and the mom was in heat. She was kind of a whore, and constantly presented herself to me, which was more than a little disturbing. It’s only understandable that growing up in such a strange environment would have devastating effects on young Pirate (who got his name because of an eye infection).

Today Pirate is obsessed with bathrooms, drinking from toilets, sleeping in sinks and tubs. He spends 90% of his time in there. Also, he randomly cries, periodically throughout the day. When he goes into one of these fits, he’s usually looking around bewildered. Say his name, and he returns to his senses, and comes running to you.

Our theory is that when we inevitably started finding homes for his brothers and sisters, the trauma that Pirate endured, coupled with the effects of having a high-class prostitute for a mother, caused Pirate to repress every memory he had, including short-term memory, as a drastic measure to protect his fragile feline psyche. This has caused permanent short-term amnesia, and Pirate constantly forgets where he is, who we are, and what he’s doing. The bathroom is the only thing that makes him happy, reminding him of a simpler time, a happier time.

Others

Our other cats, while not having as elaborate back-stories as Gizmo and Pirate, have equally awesome names, each linking them to one or more specific pop-culture references:

• Willow the Whisker (from the movie, Willow) - Passed away last year.
• Geoffrey Barbara Butler (the full name of the butler on Fresh Prince) - Did not handle puberty well, now living with parents.
• Erwin (we got him the day the Crocodile Hunter died) - Did not handle puberty well, now living with friends of parents.
• Oliver Von Lichtenstein (from the Disney movie “Oliver & Company” and Heath Ledger’s character in “A Knight’s Tale”) - Our current kitten.

And in case you were wondering, Gizmo is named after a gremlin, and Pirate is named after the son of Jonathan Davis, the lead singer of Korn… A band neither my wife nor I enjoy.

Obviously I’m a cat person. No doubt about that. I love our dogs, too, but my cats (incidentally all boys, except for Willow) are like my friends. The dogs prefer my wife, and the cats prefer me. Always (except for Willow).

With my daughter coming, I often wonder what kind of effect these long, drawn out, overly elaborate stories we create to explain the mundane will have on a child. Will it inspire her imagination, pushing her to develop her own interesting stories? Or will it give her some kind of weird complex about animals, Canada, and Russian feline prostitutes? I’m hoping for the prior. Time will tell.