The Meow Meow

We have had our cat for about a year now. The one officially named Emily Mortimer, but I have always called her Meow Meow. Last night, I said to Peter, "This cat doesn't have a real name."

"Yes she does. We call her Meow Meow."

"But that was sort of an interim name until I could come up with something better, something more suitable, except that I never fully believed we'd keep her and now she's stuck with this stupid name."

"Meow Meow, isn't stupid."

Well, isn't it? Sorta?

Her name isn't exactly Meow Meow since I call her, "The Meow Meow." As in:

"When did you feed The Meow Meow?"

"Did you see The Meow Meow?"

"Has The Meow Meow peed in the toilet today?"

When we found her last year, we figured we would clean her up and find a nice home for her, because we FO SHO did not want to add "cat owner" to our resume.

But she's been a very easy cat to deal with. When my friend Marisol came over and we asked her if she wanted a cat, she said:

"Hell, no. I don't want a keep a litter box."

"Oh," I said. "She does all her business in the toilet, so you won't need to keep a litter box."

"Well," Marisol said. "I don't want a cat to scratch up my stuff."

"She doesn't do that," I said. "When she wants to go scratch, she goes to her scratch pad."

While talking to Marisol about The Meow Meow, I realized that we have raised a pretty nice cat. She isn't much trouble at all. The only down side to her personality is that she isn't very friendly. She's not the kind of cat who runs up to you for pets, unless she wants to eat. But I think the reason for that is that every time we give the cat attention, our huge dogs run up to us all, "Hey! What're you DOin'?"

So why do I still have moments when I want to get rid of her?

I'll just say it. I'm not a cat person. I don't really like cats. I like going to other people's houses and petting their cats and hanging out with them for a little while, but I'm just not that crazy about them.

The Meow Meow is almost no trouble at all and that's why she's still here, but I always feel that perhaps she deserves to be in a household of cat lovers.

But then she'll look so cut sitting at the windowsill, or meow at me to ask me to watch her pee in the toilet and almost every time she goes in the toilet, Peter says, "Awww... Look at how much she loves you. She wants to go for you."

And then another day will go by. And I'm faced with the reality of having to keep her for 15 more years.