... and Bingo was her name. Or was it?

Seeing that I was a little angryish on my last posting, I'll try to write something nice and cuddly for a change.
Here goes.

If my cat ran away, I wouldn't know how to call her to me.

quite the little gymnastic

The reason is that she doesn't know her own name.
I suppose that's partly my fault. Her official name is Lana. A name chosen because it sounds nice, it means "wool" in Italian, and seeing that I live above a store that sells woolly things I thought it was fairly appropriate.

Until one day, a friend (male) walks up to me and asks me what's the name of my cat. I answer "Lana".
Having clearly thought about it already beforehand, he asks me to read the name from the end to the beginning. Let's just say that I didn't call my cat Lana after that.

But I have to call my cat something don't I? I started to use names such as "Boccone" (= a little bite to eat), "Cucciola"
(= puppy), and later on also "Coccodrillo" (= Crocodile). The last one came about when she started to hide from me, wait very still until I happened to pass by and then attack me. She would wrestle my feet like a Crocodile, hence the nickname.

You know the TV show Everybody loves Raymond? You know he makes up a new nickname for his wife every day? Well, that's what happened to me and my cat. And that's the reason why she doesn't know her own name.

http://captaininfinity.us/crossthreads/ray.htm

 my man Esko

I have a weird way of dealing with my pets. I used to have a gekko, named Esko. Ever since I had held a lizard on the palm of my hand when I was an exchange student in the good ol' US of A, I had wanted one for myself. So after about 10 years I went and bought a gekko. It was a slinky little thing, the last one left at the pet store. I felt like such a good Samaritan taking him home with me. "I'll nurse you back to health". Right. About 15 minutes later, when I had realized that he wasn't one of those gekkos who you can cuddle, and that having him in the house would mean having 20 living crickets in the house with him, I realized I had made a huge mistake. It didn't help that I had to de-worm him, which made him hate me even more. Anyway, in time he won me over, I learned to love him with all my heart and I was ever so sad to leave him behind when I came to Italy. Grief ridden, he passed away soon after.

The same thing happened with my cat (not the passing away part, but the weird beginning-part). Suddenly I had this thing in my house that stank (she had worms which made her doo-doo stink like, well... shit), that wouldn't obey me, that would leave white hair all over my black carpet and wake me up several times during the night. Obviously I've grown to love her very much since, but let's just say that my experiences with pets have made me think that I probably shouldn't have kids. Ever.

"oh I drunk too much milk last night"

I also have a very skilled and nice vet. I've gotten to know him fairly well since my cat was a bit of a rescue-case, and like I said she had worms, an eye infection and some other problems. So during the first few months I took her to the vet at least 15 times.

During our first visit he asked me a lot of questions like "does she poo regularly?", "does she eat and drink regularly?" and "is she generally active?". Yes, yes and yes. Lastly, he took the cat's head, looked at the eyes and then kinda stretched the skin back in a way that her eyes sort of rolled back (in a gentle way of course). "And has she ever done this?". I was a bit freaked out and said "oh dear no". He smirked at me and said "Oh good, otherwise it would mean that she's possessed by the devil and I'd have to call the exorcist. MUAHHAHAHAHAHAHA". Ok, it made me laugh the first time he said it. After the 15th time I didn't laugh anymore, but he's still a great vet.

 So that's the story of my cat. She's the reason why I started to refer to life's little struggles as "it's like raising a crocodile". Because god knows I'm raising one. Bless her heart.

studying German