Darby

Darby was the first cat I adopted on my own. I was living in a summer sublet at the time. One of my coworker's cat had had kittens, and they needed to find homes. I knew it was not a good time for me to adopt a kitten, but I had been living without cats for two years, and had to have one. I spent the morning calling my roomates and asking them if they minded, as long as I kept him in my room. Noone seemed too bothered. I met the kittens in the afternoon, running around the computer room (or rather, a small portion of the computer room). I knew I didn't want a female cat, as spaying would have been more expensive, and Darby's only other male sibling had already been adopted. He was also one of the few short-haired cats in the litter. Another coworker also wanted to adopt a male cat, but ended up taking a female kitten. Darby was mine. I carried him home in a box previously used for computer paper, with holes punched in the top. He cried all the way back to the house, and I had to talk a friend into driving me to the pet store for supplies.

Of course, at this point in time, Darby had no name. He was mostly referred to as "snotface" due to a small sniffle. And he had a lovely case of earmites. Being a rambunctious kitten, he was constantly running into things, and I thought about naming him Crash, but I'd head that cats respond better to names that end in an "ee" sound, and "Crashy" was just too horrible for words. I settled on naming him Darby, after the lead singer of the Germs, Darby Crash.

Darby was always a little nuts, but he started out as a nice cat. He used to eat hummus, tear around the backs of the couches and chairs in the living room, and cry pitifully at the door whenever Manda cooked chicken. He also used to climb the fabric-covered makeshift closet in my room. Once up on top, however, he couldn't get back down, so I often had to rescue him when I got home from work.

After the sublet ended, I moved in with my boyfriend, his roomate, and another friend who was staying there temporarily. Things did not go smoothly for poor Darby. He was constantly getting in trouble for things he didn't understand, like setting all the rats (snake food) free, then sleeping in their cage. He did catch a mouse during his stay there, and the guys were very proud of him. So proud that they didn't take the mouse away, and I woke up to find it on the bedroom floor in the morning. Still, they weren't cat people, and I think Darby's stay there did more harm than good.

After two months there, I moved into my own place. I finally got together enough money to take Darby to the vet for his shots. He did okay at the beginning, but then sank his teeth into the vets hand when she tried to pet him. This got his rabies shot commuted to a couple weeks later, since there's some legal thing about that. He also was neutered a couple weeks after the rabies shot. When I went to pick him up, they said he was still somewhat sedated, and went to get him. I heard the most godawful howling and screeching, and it went on for about 15 minutes. They finally managed to get my "sedated" wild cat out of his cage and into his carrier and I took him home. Vet experiences from then on were bad news. One vet was too scared to take him out of his carrier to examine him. Another said that he could probably take on a Rottweiler. His current vet has given me meds to sedate him prior to bringing him in, so he won't break his teeth off on the metal gate on his carrier. Yikes.

As you can probably tell by now, Darby is not a people person. He even gives me a hard time. But he snuggles with me, and purrs, and kneads, and acts adorable. So what if noone else gets to see that side of him? I have him all to myself. Heh.

Nemo

I decided that I could afford to get a second cat once I could afford to start buying "premium" food for Darby. I wanted to get a female, short-haired black cat. I ended up with a long-haired, male, orange and white cat. How did this happen?

I had let my coworkers know that I was looking for another cat. One coworker had a sister who was very active in animal rights. She had a friend who had found a cat roaming around her neighborhood. She already had one cat, and unfortunately couldn't keep the second for medical reasons. I went to meet the cat, and ended up adopting him on the spot, due to his sweet nature and constant purring.

I had no idea what I was in for. I hadn't known for sure I was just going to take him, so I didn't have a cat carrier with me when I got him. He rode him in the car with me sans carrier, but just sat in the backseat looking out the window. All seemed well. He and Darby even managed to make peace with each other within the first 48 hours.

Then, the destruction began. Nemo scratched the wallpaper (ugly, I admit) in my apartment to shreds. Not only that, but he scratched through the plaster underneath. I added scratching posts, and he used them, but continued his assault on the wallpaper. When I moved to Austin, the apartment locator laughed at me when I kept insisting that any apartment he showed me had to be wallpaper-free, but I had good reason for it.

Nemo got his name prior to the destruction. He was just so good-natured that all he did was eat, sleep, and purr. I tried to discover his "personality" so I could find a name, and I took so long that my dad finally said "if you don't name him, I'm calling him Nemo." Nemo means nobody in greek. This is most notable in the Iliad (or the Odyssey, I forget) where Odysseus is dealing with the cyclops, and the cyclops asks who's there, and he replies "Nemo" and the cyclops really believes he's talking to "nobody". The name stuck.

Now that I live in a wallpaperless environment, there's much less destruction and Nemo is still very good-natured.