Friday, February 01, 2008

Our Milkshake Brings All The Toys To The Yard

Meet Milkshake, our new kitten.

Ever since Mookie, our ornery, cranky 16-year old cat died a little over a year ago, we'd been promising the girls a new kitten. When I say 'we' I really mean 'me' on behalf of 'us,' since Rigel wasn't too anxious to get a new cat. Come to find out that those big balls of cat hair clinging to his bass amp weren't really helping his sound any, and he always only pretended to like scooping those clumps of poop out of the catbox, because he loved me so much.

We'd been looking for a kitten since right after Christmas, but turns out there aren't many available right now because it isn't "kitten season." Who knew kittens had a season? When someone first told me this I thought they were kidding, and I made a little joke about how if Trader Joes could find strawberries year round I didn't see how finding an off-season kitten would be so hard.

That person didn't laugh, because apparently making jokes about cats is not very funny to some people, people who look down on you if you don't have a subscription to Cat Fancy magazine or a license plate that reads 'TabbyLuvr.' But that's a whole other post in itself, a story about my encounters with some of these Cat People who didn't want to adopt a cat to me because I had kids who might pull the kitten's tail, and judged me for not knowing what the best cat food was, and were totally appalled that I would even dream of making a joke comparing kitties to produce.

Where was I?

Kitty!

We got Milkshake at our local animal shelter, and we can't help but feel that fate brought us together. To make a long story short, we had gone to the shelter after a long day of kitty-searching. We found Milkshake in a cage on the reception counter, and after we adopted him we found out he had been brought in by his owner only 35 minutes before we had gotten there. And just in time, since Rigel had started mumbling about how after all the hours looking for a cat maybe the Pet Gods were trying to tell us we should just give up and head on over to BestBuy and adopt a flat screen plasma.

We had a hard time deciding on a name so Rigel came up with a very elaborate balloting system where we all wrote down suggestions and then he had us each vote for our favorites, repeating the process until there was only one left. It took twenty hours and was very impressive - I can't help but think that if Rigel were in charge of the 2000 election there would have been no way that Gore would have lost by a hanging chad.

In the end the name that was left was Milkshake, only narrowly beating out SouljaBoy, which was Kiyomi's idea and Kira swore she could never bring herself to use. Nobody voted for my entries, Cheeseburger or Tofu.

The most amazing thing is Rigel has actually admitted that he likes this cat. I guess he couldn't resist Milkshake's big, round kitty eyes staring up at him saying, "There's no one else I'd rather have clean up my poop."

Meow.

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19 comments:

  1. This is hilarious:

    "if Trader Joes could find strawberries year round I didn't see how finding an off-season kitten would be so hard."

    Good stuff.

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  2. He is adorable.

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  3. What a cutie. And I don't even like cats!

    Seriously, though, THANK YOU for adopting a pet from your local shelter.

    Suddenly I'm very very hungry.

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  4. Congrats on the new kitty. Glad he is liked and likable.

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  5. Rigel will be talking to all the TabbyLuvrs singing ... "My cat is better than yours ..."
    -- hope you are doing well SPM!

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  6. Sweet kitty-cat.

    Though the name makes me want to bust out singing, "my milkshake brings all the boys to the yard..."

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  7. LOL!
    Milkshake looks like the cat I had when I was in high school. His name was Riley, but my brother in law called him TennisShoe.

    We have a kitten from xmas, named Flower. He's a boy. He, too, is a rare off-season kitten.

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  8. Milkshake is adorable (for an out-of-season kitten, of course).

    Congratulations!

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  9. That is one cute cat!

    And if Rigel can protect the vote this year, I'll buy him the flat screen plasma--damn my credit!

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  10. He is adorable, and it was a good joke.

    How CAN Trader Joes always get strawberries?

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  11. SHe is dam cute and I love the name.

    I would have voted for Cheeseburger though, since I helped name a friends cat, Jr. Bacon Cheeseburger once.

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  12. CUTE! Our cat, mario, adopted us. He was dumped off in our back yard and found us. He was so little that we had to feed him with a bottle for weeks, AND I wasn't even entirely sure he was a cat as he looked more rat like than anything. I am happy to report that we didn't nurse a rat though, Mario is indeed a very fiesty cat! :) Welcome to Milkshake.

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  13. He's so cute I want to eat his little head. I bet he tastes like strawberries.

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  14. We adopted our cat from the shelter too. But, he's fallen out of favor in this househould- we now call him The Beast.

    Milkshake is cute as a button though. I'm sure he's getting a lot of love over there.

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  15. arrrrrgh!!! so cute!!!!!

    congratulations. . .i'm so jealous. if our cat didn't attempt to slay every living thing that comes into our apartment we would be getting a new kitten.

    for the record, cheeseburger is a brilliant name for a cat and when we do get a kitten i might just have to steal it.

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  16. Congrats on your new baby! What a cutie :) I have to ask, does the name Milkshake have anything to do with dialog from the movie "There Will Be Blood"? Just wondering... http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2008-02-03-blood-milkshake_N.htm

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  17. Soooo cute! As far as Rigel, it's always the ones who protest too much that end up loving the kitties the most.

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  18. Milkshake is SO cute. Love that name.

    Also, didn't know there was a feline season.

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  19. Very funny post! I found your blog today by way of Blogging Zoom (your story about the woman who was stuck to her toilet for 2 years). I zoomed you and subscribed. Love your writing style and humor.

    Congrats on adopting Milkshake!

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