When my 21-year-old niece Carmen moved in with me six months ago, we visited the Humane Society one rainy Sunday to select a cat to bring into our petless lives. Before we got there, I decreed that the animal would be named Walter Cronkite, no matter the gender.
Carmen was unfazed. She knew of my propensity for naming cats after broadcast journalists. She reminded me that when she was 8, her family had taken on two kittens they found abandoned in their neighborhood. They—brother number one, my sis-in-law, Carmen and 6-year-old Lucas—bandied about names, but none stuck. Carmen and Lucas threw out suggestions like Puffy, Magic and Ketchup. Amateurs, clearly. I offered Connie Chung and Maury Povich, names so unfamiliar and unexpected the entire family went glassy-eyed, fell silent and then agreed.
Carmen and I made a pact before we walked into the building. We said that perhaps Walter was there. Perhaps not. We wouldn’t rush it or force it. We would wait until we both knew it.
We were escorted through the dog corridor to the back of the building and into the Cat Room. We walked slowly down a narrow aisle past the rows of stacked cages, through the wafting smells of urine, abandonment and incarceration. We asked the worker to leave us alone with the cats, so we could call out Walter Cronkite until one of them meowed in response, made eye contact and extended a paw toward us, leading us to believe (as we must have needed to) that this animal was The One.
We found her. Or really: she found us.
During the car ride home, I explained to Carmen the nuances of my cat naming protocol. For cats that belong to me, my system was more specific than merely broadcast journalist. The cats I own must bear the names of dead, famous TV journalists. I don’t know why. My approach just evolved after I named my first two cats Huntley and Brinkley. They were a brother and sister from a neighbor’s litter when I was in college. They’ve been followed by Howard K. Smith and Max Robinson. And now, of course, Walter Cronkite.
We drove on, and I further detailed my taxonomy. Other cats in my general feline orbit are given the names of living TV journalists. (See Maury Povich and Connie Chung, above.) I told her about Sylvia Poggioli, the one exception thus far. Poggioli is a husky-voiced NPR reporter who is stationed in Rome. As far as I know she is very much alive. A few years ago I agreed to a three-month cat-sitting gig for a friend bound for a California Buddhist retreat. My friend called the cat Nuri, but that didn’t have sufficient melodic properties or enough syllables, so I rechristened her Sylvia Poggioli, a name that thrilled every time I called it out my back door at dusk, entreating the cat to make her way home for a bowl of chicken-flavored cereal pellets that she dove into with gusto.
When I was living in Central Europe 10 years ago, I befriended a formidably intelligent German woman at a conference. We met admiring one another’s shoes. Heidi worked as an advisor for the German Minister of Defense. Things were going along just fine in our developing friendship until one night over dinner she told me that she could read the thoughts of animals. “I am especially good with cats,” she confided. “They are quite philosophical and specific, but sometimes their needs are very bourgeois.” This is a true story. I spent the rest of the night searching her face for signs of lunacy or hints that she had been joking. Our friendship fizzled away after that. I found I just couldn’t rejigger my belief system or suspend my judgment long enough to find her not crazy.
But back to Walter Cronkite and this column, which I have written about cats and which, I fear, inches me publicly and perilously close to the dreaded territory of Cat Lady. While I know that I don’t own a swarm of cats or live oblivious to the smells they introduce into a household or speak baby talk when they skulk into view, writing about a cat can encourage a disparaging label. I am a cat person, yes. I am not a cat lady. I state that for the record.
This isn’t about cats. It’s about idiosyncrasies, the small, quirky and custom-tailored ways our personalities curl and bloom. We individuate ourselves from the swarm of humanity with our eccentricities, our peculiarities. One of mine is my cat naming system. Maybe one of yours is about socks or driving or haircuts. We all have them, and yet they are all exclusive just to us. I like the tug and pull of that. I wrestle my peculiarities sometimes. I flinch from going public with them. But the older I get, the more I’ve decided to see them as sparklers that I light from time to time. When I do, they throw a fleeting light on my face and let the world see who I am.
