First Dog chosen

[VAdame]

Too bad the little girl's allergic -- there's a lot to be said for a nice, fluffy kitty as a pet, too!

[SportsFan68]

Too bad the little girl's allergic -- there's a lot to be said for a nice, fluffy kitty as a pet, too!

What a beautiful big kitty!

Holy cow, how does that flimsy card table hold him up?

[VAdame]

That's Weenie -- she was tiny when we got her! Look how scrawny she was!


Once she came to live with us, she just ate and ate until she about doubled her size

I think it took her a long time to realize that no one was going to take the food away. We don't know what her living situation was before, but she must have had to fight for every morsel.

She's living with Karen and John and John-Angelo now and doing fine as an only cat. At first they had her and Little John (the cat, not the kid!) but he's too much of a handful, so he's back with us and the other 2 (Elfie and Bagheera.) Weenie and Little John are pretty attached to each other (she raised him from a tiny kitten), but Weenie and Bagheera just hated each other from day one! It's kind of nice to not have the catfights going on now. Little John gets along with everyone -- even bossy Queen Baggy. And he's been really sweet with 14-year-old Auntie Elfie since he's been back home.

[SportsFan68]

She was scrawny! Just like Clayton! He'd been eating out garbage cans when SteelersFan rescued him.

She's so big, I was sure she was a he. She's gorgeous!

[VAdame]

I think the calico markings pretty much mean the kitty is a she Something about the way the gene for orange manifests -- calico or tortie females, ginger toms. Little John's not quite a ginger, more yellow than orange. But the females in his birth family, including his mom, are all torties or calicos. He came from the feral colony in the field behind our house, and Karen rescued him when his birth mom left him out by our back steps one cold night! Weenie took one look at the little baby and adopted him

Weenie with her "dad":


Little John as a bitty baby:

[MarleysGh0st]

Little John's not quite a ginger, more yellow than orange. But the females in his birth family, including his mom, are all torties or calicos. He came from the feral colony in the field behind our house, and Karen rescued him when his birth mom left him out by our back steps one cold night! Weenie took one look at the little baby and adopted him

So you named him after your son? That's...unusual.

[VAdame]

Little John's not quite a ginger, more yellow than orange. But the females in his birth family, including his mom, are all torties or calicos. He came from the feral colony in the field behind our house, and Karen rescued him when his birth mom left him out by our back steps one cold night! Weenie took one look at the little baby and adopted him

So you named him after your son? That's...unusual.

LOL -- yeah, too many Johns!

I don't have a son -- Big John is my son-in-law -- at the time (2-1/2 years ago) he was Karen's boyfriend. SHE named the kitten after him Baby Johnny wasn't even thought of at that time!

Big John also goes by Juliano (stage/professional name)
John-Angelo is Johnny or Baby Johnny
The cat is Little John

And my stepson/Karen's half-brother is Sean which is a version of John

Confused yet?!

[MarleysGh0st]

Confused yet?!

Nah. My genealogical research on the Danish side of my family has lots of reused names. For John they've got Jens and Hans and sometimes Johann. And when they named a child after a grandfather and the child died, they weren't squeamish about giving another child the same name, and maybe another one after that!

But I don't think they named cats after boyfriends!

[peacock2121]

Little John's not quite a ginger, more yellow than orange. But the females in his birth family, including his mom, are all torties or calicos. He came from the feral colony in the field behind our house, and Karen rescued him when his birth mom left him out by our back steps one cold night! Weenie took one look at the little baby and adopted him

So you named him after your son? That's...unusual.

LOL -- yeah, too many Johns!

I don't have a son -- Big John is my son-in-law -- at the time (2-1/2 years ago) he was Karen's boyfriend. SHE named the kitten after him Baby Johnny wasn't even thought of at that time!

Big John also goes by Juliano (stage/professional name)
John-Angelo is Johnny or Baby Johnny
The cat is Little John

And my stepson/Karen's half-brother is Sean which is a version of John

Confused yet?!

Our family's version is Gus (August).

We got my dad (Gus), my brother (Gussie), my nephew (little Gus), my sister's dog (Auggie), my nephew Joel August and his son Joel August Jr.

[ghostjmf]

What a cutie!

The kitty. Well, the guy adoring kitty ain't no slouch either.

The genetic thing is:

Color of fur, in cats, is dictated by a gene on the X chromosomes.

So you have 2 colors possible, black & red. (And, of course, all the colors you can get by blending black with white or red with white. White in cat fur, though not in paint, is "the absence of color".) Any one X chromosome can only dictate one of those 2 colors.

So the only cats that have both black & red color are females, as they have 2 X chromosomes, & cats with Kleinfelter's Syndrome, where the chromosomal makeup is XYX, who are male but do have both black & red, due to the 2 X chromosomes. They have health problems due to the extra X, too.

And then their's my kitty. Definitely male, at least based on genitalia. But sandy tiger stripes, with a few large black spots. Nobody was or is interested in having genetic analysis done, except me. But not interested enough to pay for it myself. I suggested that the animal hospital do it before we "fixed" him, just to see if he was gonna be some kind of valuable breeding animal. They of course laughed.

I don't know what's going on chromosomally in Bengal cats, a housecat breed that is tawny, with black spots, in both genders. I'd guess there's a fur-color gene that got put on some other chromosome, making the black spots come in black.

[VAdame]

Confused yet?!

Nah. My genealogical research on the Danish side of my family has lots of reused names. For John they've got Jens and Hans and sometimes Johann. And when they named a child after a grandfather and the child died, they weren't squeamish about giving another child the same name, and maybe another one after that!

But I don't think they named cats after boyfriends!

Yeah -- my first husband's family had 2 sons die in infancy, over in Italy -- and they ended up re-using the names!!! Dominic and Eli/Elijah. That seemed very strange to me. Keith's family lost one child (Douglas, who was Wayne's twin -- to SIDS.) And no one in this very large family has named a son Douglas since.

[MarleysGh0st]

Confused yet?!

Nah. My genealogical research on the Danish side of my family has lots of reused names. For John they've got Jens and Hans and sometimes Johann. And when they named a child after a grandfather and the child died, they weren't squeamish about giving another child the same name, and maybe another one after that!

But I don't think they named cats after boyfriends!

Yeah -- my first husband's family had 2 sons die in infancy, over in Italy -- and they ended up re-using the names!!! Dominic and Eli/Elijah. That seemed very strange to me. Keith's family lost one child (Douglas, who was Wayne's twin -- to SIDS.) And no one in this very large family has named a son Douglas since.

That was in his generation? What I was talking about was 19th century. The average number of children born in a family was much higher back then, as was the child mortality rate. And, in Denmark, they had a strong custom about passing down names--first boy named after the paternal grandfather, first girl after the maternal grandmother, etc.--and so I'm sure it was more of a concern about carrying on the grandfather's name than about a morbid remembrance of the dead child.

Plus, until the mid-19th century, they used patronymics instead of a permanent family surname, just for further confusion!

[Evil Squirrel]

Too bad the little girl's allergic -- there's a lot to be said for a nice, fluffy kitty as a pet, too!

Ack! Get that kid away from that evil looking cat!!!!!

[MarleysGh0st]

Ack! Get that kid away from that evil looking cat!!!!!

She doesn't look evil!

Authoratative, maybe, like she wouldn't put up with any squirrels intruding into her backyard.

[SportsFan68]

I think the calico markings pretty much mean the kitty is a she

I knew that!

[SportsFan68]

Ack! Get that kid away from that evil looking cat!!!!!

She doesn't look evil!

Authoratative, maybe, like she wouldn't put up with any squirrels intruding into her backyard.

LOL!

Good one, Marley!

[MarleysGh0st]

Ack! Get that kid away from that evil looking cat!!!!!

She doesn't look evil!

Authoratative, maybe, like she wouldn't put up with any squirrels intruding into her backyard.

LOL!

Good one, Marley!

Well, it's obvious, really.

Just look at the picture and you can see that Weenie has just been interrupted while giving Baby Johnny a lecture.

These are THE RULES.

That food dish is MINE.

The comfy chair in the living room is MINE.

The...

[VAdame]

That was in his generation? What I was talking about was 19th century. The average number of children born in a family was much higher back then, as was the child mortality rate. And, in Denmark, they had a strong custom about passing down names--first boy named after the paternal grandfather, first girl after the maternal grandmother, etc.--and so I'm sure it was more of a concern about carrying on the grandfather's name than about a morbid remembrance of the dead child.

No, his mom's generation. She was born in around 1926, and they were in the US by then. Her brother Dominic (the 2nd) just died last year -- he was born in 1924 (also here I think.) Uncle Eli (the 2nd) had mild mental retardation. He died a long time ago -- and he's the Elijah that my grandson Eli is named for

I don't know how Eli (I) died, but the first Dominic's death was a horrific accident and my ex's grandma apparently ended up with bad psych issues afterward. She died shortly before I started dating her grandson, and the family all said it was probably a good thing -- because she was a mean, bad-tempered old lady and would have hated me because I wasn't Italian. Interestingly, of her 4 surviving kids, only one (Uncle Dom) married an Italian.