Jim and I are blessed to live with two cats, brothers no less, named Omelet and Eisenhower.
There they are on a typical afternoon, resting in between bouts of eating, walking the perimeters, and doing battle for supremacy.
Actually, Eisenhower’s supremacy is not in doubt. He is the alpha cat, and he reinforces that status daily, in big ways and small. Which is interesting, because he was not always the big man in the house.
Here they are in their infancy.
You can see that baby orange tabby Omelet was much bigger than his brother, baby gray tabby Eisenhower. And of course, those were not their birth names. They were born part of the “Sunnydale Five,” or the “Scooby Gang,” which fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer will understand. Here is the zoomed-out version of the previous pic, featuring Spike (Omelet) and Xander (Eisenhower), as well as younger sisters Buffy and Willow. Baby sister Angel came along later. (And yes, fans of Buffy will know that Angel was actually a boy vampire, but hey, it’s 2020. Who are we to impose our ideas of gender on others?)
We are lucky enough to have their baby pictures, as well as the complete story of their birth, since all five cats were rescued by my brother and sister-in-law in Indiana in the spring of 2018. Brian and Julianne had already rescued one backyard kitten abandoned by its feral mama in 2016, and a second in 2017, and both are still living happily ever after with their rescuers. But feral mama cat invited a second mama cat to the backyard maternity ward in 2018, and Bri and Juls decided five new cats would just be too much. They took them all in, but immediately started looking for forever homes.
Little Spike (latterly Omelet) was very sick. He needed trips to the vet, doses of antibiotics, flea medicine, and two daily visits to the steam room (shower), which my brother Brian undertook gladly and lovingly. Little Xander (the future Eisenhower) loved his sick brother very much, and the two were inseparable from birth.
Jim and I fell in love with the pair, due in no small part to a series of heart-tugging videos sent to us by Julianne, and in the summer of 2018 we went and picked them up and brought them to their Minneapolis forever home.
And that’s when we changed their names. And I got to thinking: What, exactly, is in a name? What do our names really say about us? Do they shape our development? What if our names change, either through our own agency or through the agency of another? Does knowing a person’s true name, as Ursula K. LeGuin asserts in her Earthsea series, give one absolute power over that person?
I don’t happen to put much stock in names. But it has been a fun exercise, thinking about the once and future names of our cat roommates. Take Eisenhower, for example, above. He was christened “Xander,” and he had very goopy eyes when he was born. Fans of Buffy will remember that in season 7, Xander was dubbed “the one who sees everything” (right before one of his eyes was taken, but let’s not go there). So okay, goopy eyes, Xander, eye-related… I get it. And he became Eisenhower. What does that name tell us? Well, General Dwight D. Eisenhower was the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe during WWII, supervising the invasion of Normandy, and later served two terms as president of the United States.
Our Eisenhower is definitely in charge around here. He is alpha cat to Omelet, and leads a daily invasion of the food stores and the toy box, as well as twice-daily assaults on his brother.
This young charmer was born “Spike.” Fans of the show will know that vampire Spike spent several seasons with a chip in his head that prevented him (mostly) from feeding and defending himself, just like our feline Spike. He was sick and needed tending. And then he became Omelet.
/ˈäm(ə)lət/
noun: omelet; plural noun: omelets
a dish of beaten eggs cooked in a frying pan until firm, often with a filling added while cooking, and usually served folded over.
“a cheese omelet”
Hmm. Well, his favorite place to stretch out and get petted is on top of the stove. And he has the coloring of a cheese omelet, that’s for sure. Covered with Colby Jack, perhaps. Forgive me while I stretch for the rest.
Our Omelet is kind of like an egg. Self-contained. Full of potential. Secretive. Covered in a brittle (emotional) shell, but all soft and gooey inside.
And very often folded over.
