October 2004

After many months of thinking about it, Morgen and I finally adopted a kitten today. Zora is a 3-month-old brownish-gray tabby. I’ll put some pictures here at some point; I figure adjusting to a new home is traumatic enough without having to deal with camera flashes.

We were really tempted by a bunch of others, but somehow Zora charmed us the most. Hats off to the San Francisco SPCA for an outstanding orientation program for new kitten owners (“Kittengarten”) and all-around helpfulness.

One of our biggest worries was what we would name a cat. Every animal that come in gets a more or less arbitrary name, and some of them are pretty awful. For example, the woman handling the adoption showed us a picture of her dog Gus, who had originally been named Sushi. On the other hand, some names seem to fit just right—such as a black male cat we also liked named Mojo (which sounds like the beginnings of our names put together). Zora was in the same class; it seems to me like the right mix of fearless, playful, and contemplative. She’s clearly a very smart cat, and she’s already shown progress toward developing the crucial skill of falling asleep on my lap while I read a book.