Crazy Old Cat Lady

It's official. I am over 30, single, and now... I have a cat. I am well on my way to being the Crazy Old Cat Lady of Plantation.

I'm not even sure how it happened. I visited my friend Diane on Thursday night (I had some business up her way so I got to sneak in a bonus visit). She was fostering a cat because she volunteers at her local humane society and they were having a bit of a cat-flu epidemic, so the shelter asked the volunteers to take home the healthy cats so that the others could be quarantined. Let me just say that Diane is NOT a cat person, she is a dog person all the way through. But she fell in love with this little cat that she took home. And I love cats. I love dogs too, but I can't remember ever not having a cat while I was growing up ...but I am allergic to them. I didn't really know it til college and moving away from home... my first trip back I spent sneezing, wheezing and barely breathing. Ick. But I still love them, so whenever I visit cat people (like Nat), I pop a claritin and move on, and try to refrain from petting the cats.

But at some point during my brief visit, Diane got it into her head that I should adopt this cat. And she would NOT SHUT UP about it until I finally started thinking... ok, well... what's the worst that could happen? I'll take a daily pill for a week or two, and then I'll be fine. I've done it before, when I moved back home with my parents and the likes of Fat Frankie the two-toothed wonder. I was a little hesitant, but I could use the company, and she's painfully cute ... so I adopted her.

I left the cat with Diane and drove up to Orlando on Friday evening, spent some time with my grandma (who is a total cat person and completely psyched about my new buddy) and then popped in on the Cherjovsky clan. Then I drove back down today and met Diane and picked up my cat. The poor thing meowed the whole way down ... I was gonna take her out of the box and let her roam around the car while I drove but I was afraid I might not be able to get her back in the box when we got home. We got home and she spent the entire afternoon snooping around my house, looking in every nook and cranny, just investigating. She's a lovey little purrbox, though, and right now she's taken up residence behind my laptop on the desk. Too cute.

I don't know what to name her ... I'm open to suggestions. She came with the name Roxy but I'm generally averse to naming pets with normal people names. Since she's so nosy, I thought of Snoops (sounds too much like poops), or since she's all orangey I thought maybe Lady Marmalade (too long) or Ginger Spice (too trashy) or Nutmeg (a viable possibility). Diane wants me to call her Lovey but I think that's gay and too Gilliganesque. One thing I've noticed about this cat is that she's an acrobat. She gets up on her hind legs like a dog when she's investigating things, and she likes to perch in random spots -- this is characteristic of most cats but today, she actually jumped onto the back of my desk chair and sat there... which is no small feat considering the thing is probably about 1/2 inch wide. And she likes to sit on my shoulder. So I'm thinking I might call her Soleil, after le cirque du soleil. I'm not sure though.

Take a peek and gimme your thoughts: