Hi, all!
Finally decided to join up after reading for a while. I'm presently the owner of two wonderful cats, Menelaus of Sparta, 13, (pronounced Men-uh-lay-us, I know the spelling is a bit odd, it's transliterated from Greek) and Aphrodite, 3, (my daughter named her, she decided to follow my tradition of classical names. She asked me "Daddy, what's the Greek goddess of beauty?" when I told her she should be the one to name her.)
Of course, we don't call them that all the time, Menelaus is "poof-poof" or "poofie" in relaxed circumstances, and Aphrodite is "Dite" (Di-tee) to her many friends.
I've had a lot of other cats who've passed on, but who've left their mark on me as well. I'm still missing Phillip of Macedon (Phillip), Zyelena, and Yuri Gagarin (Yuri Cat) who we lost all within a year of each other about 3 years ago (along with a favorite goldfish and a special little hamster my daughter owned--it never rains but it pours).
That's when we got Dite, and she's brought so much joy back into our house that we call her our "Wonder Cat."
In spite of the cats we've lost, one thing that means so much to me is that these days I can reasonably expect to spend so much more time with my cats than years ago. When I was young, it was normal to only have a cat for about four years or so, and seven or eight years was a long time. I got almost twenty years with both Phillip and Zyelena, and even Yuri, who had health problems from the day he appeared starving and swollen on our back patio, small enough to lay in my palm, lasted over 13 years.
Anyway, I look forward to continuing to learn, and sharing whatever knowledge I've managed to accumulate over the years, FWIW.
-Mark
http://catyarns.blogspot.com/
Finally decided to join up after reading for a while. I'm presently the owner of two wonderful cats, Menelaus of Sparta, 13, (pronounced Men-uh-lay-us, I know the spelling is a bit odd, it's transliterated from Greek) and Aphrodite, 3, (my daughter named her, she decided to follow my tradition of classical names. She asked me "Daddy, what's the Greek goddess of beauty?" when I told her she should be the one to name her.)
Of course, we don't call them that all the time, Menelaus is "poof-poof" or "poofie" in relaxed circumstances, and Aphrodite is "Dite" (Di-tee) to her many friends.
I've had a lot of other cats who've passed on, but who've left their mark on me as well. I'm still missing Phillip of Macedon (Phillip), Zyelena, and Yuri Gagarin (Yuri Cat) who we lost all within a year of each other about 3 years ago (along with a favorite goldfish and a special little hamster my daughter owned--it never rains but it pours).
That's when we got Dite, and she's brought so much joy back into our house that we call her our "Wonder Cat."
In spite of the cats we've lost, one thing that means so much to me is that these days I can reasonably expect to spend so much more time with my cats than years ago. When I was young, it was normal to only have a cat for about four years or so, and seven or eight years was a long time. I got almost twenty years with both Phillip and Zyelena, and even Yuri, who had health problems from the day he appeared starving and swollen on our back patio, small enough to lay in my palm, lasted over 13 years.
Anyway, I look forward to continuing to learn, and sharing whatever knowledge I've managed to accumulate over the years, FWIW.
-Mark
http://catyarns.blogspot.com/
