meep!

Many of you have already heard or seen the affectionate little stray that walked up to my home last summer. Here’s the story of her arrival, a couple pictures, and proper nomenclature.

It was pretty close to my birthday last summer when Ruth and I were walking back home from one place or another. This skinny tortoise shell cat walked up to us in front of my place and flopped on her back to get some tummy scratching. Ruth and I played with her for a minute and inspected her condition.

The cat had recently been on the losing end of a bad fight. Above her left eye centered on a large bald patch was a fairly recent wound. Probably three days. Given the raccoon population in the area it wouldn’t surprise me if this gregarious little kitty tangled with the wrong animal. We soon discovered that she was missing all four paws’ claws so the reason for her condition was obvious. On top of this, her ribs were exposed for lack of food.

As obviously a spayed, claw-less cat was somebody’s pet, Ruth and I held the cat and did our due diligence and canvased the neighborhood looking for signs. We checked Craig’s list, the pound, local vets, everything. No signs. As the weeks went buy we started to feel that this cat was ours. $150 later she’s full of shots and one RFID tag registered in my name. CAT ACQUIRED.

About eight months later she looks terrificly healthy. Here are some shots I took of her around Christmas:

We had trouble settling on the right name for her. One day she made this bird-like chirping sound. meep! Like a little chick. Just a bit of a squeak in your ear. She’ll sneak up behind you on the couch some times, make this meep!, and you’ll totally think is that’s hearing test they administer at the DMV. meep! Left!

So, in short, her name is meep! Spelling, punctuation, and case are part of the name. The following derivations are acceptable:

• meep!
• meep!er
• meep!les
• meep!less
• meep!anator
• Madam meep!salot
• Don’t Fear the meep!er
• you get the idea…