It's September, time of beginnings for all people academic. An appropriate time to recall a different change of everything in my life - moving to Minnesota in the early spring of my junior year of high school. New climate, new school, new friends, new house, new pets. (no, we didn't leave any behind, it was just fate that we lost both Blackie and Errnestine shortly before the move.)
Our Minnesota house, in the suburb of Eden Prairie where any farther to the west and you were out in the flat dull countryside with nothing but corn and wheat for miles, aside from the odd lake, was big and nondescript and catless. It had a basement, and thus stairs, a novelty. But no cats. Must get a cat post haste!
So we got one. Maybe from the pound, maybe from a neighbor, maybe from a colleague of my dad's, I don't remember from where. She was a strange-colored cat. Sort of patchy, off-white, greyish, brownish, hard to say what color cat. We couldn't think what to name this cat. Couldn't get a handle on her.
It was a time of new boyfriends, too. I was introduced to Joel, a law student at MacAlester College, who ran a dungeons & dragons group that my dad found for my brother and me, a way to get us quickly into some sort of social group. Joel may have been some years my senior, but we discovered in each other a sort of magic that we didn't dare explore. A couple of dinners, movies, tv nights at my house, it was a sweet time of taking it slowly. We never even kissed until just a week or two before he took off for Zagreb for a year of study abroad.
But I digress.
Joel was our cat-naming savior. Kathea. Just like that. Took a good look at the cat, cocked his head, moved his mouth around, and said "Kathea".
And so it was.
Our Minnesota house, in the suburb of Eden Prairie where any farther to the west and you were out in the flat dull countryside with nothing but corn and wheat for miles, aside from the odd lake, was big and nondescript and catless. It had a basement, and thus stairs, a novelty. But no cats. Must get a cat post haste!
So we got one. Maybe from the pound, maybe from a neighbor, maybe from a colleague of my dad's, I don't remember from where. She was a strange-colored cat. Sort of patchy, off-white, greyish, brownish, hard to say what color cat. We couldn't think what to name this cat. Couldn't get a handle on her.
It was a time of new boyfriends, too. I was introduced to Joel, a law student at MacAlester College, who ran a dungeons & dragons group that my dad found for my brother and me, a way to get us quickly into some sort of social group. Joel may have been some years my senior, but we discovered in each other a sort of magic that we didn't dare explore. A couple of dinners, movies, tv nights at my house, it was a sweet time of taking it slowly. We never even kissed until just a week or two before he took off for Zagreb for a year of study abroad.
But I digress.
Joel was our cat-naming savior. Kathea. Just like that. Took a good look at the cat, cocked his head, moved his mouth around, and said "Kathea".
And so it was.
.
2 comments:
hi nanu, there are lots of signposts for stages of our life and pets are one of them. i can think of the various dogs and cats and hamsters and fish and bunnies and snails and they point to the bigger picture of life at that time. have a peaceful day. steven
What a beautiful story.
For me, a move halfway through high school would have been fraught; I'm sure I would have been terribly traumatized but it sounds like you made it smoothly and sweetly from one place to the next. Wow!!
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