Kitten smitten.

Oh, yes. She IS that cute.

There’s a new addition to the Meldraw household, and she is happiness embodied. I have a kitten.

She is very small and very soft. She can jump the kitten equivalent of the Empire State Building, and she weighs less than my television remote control. Her little “mew” sounds like the tiniest jingle bell in existence, and her favorite thing is EVERYTHING. She arrived in the wee hours of Saturday morning, and by Sunday afternoon, she had decided I was hers forever and ever Amen.

The kitten was born on a friend’s farm in Kansas, part of a litter born to a wild stray cat that sought solace in the farmhouse basement. The entire litter was gregarious from birth, and my little one had already left her mother and was eating dry food by six weeks old. She is now seven weeks old, and has decided she is a puppy.

She made the four-hour drive to my place with my kitty courier friend without a single complaint. She sat on the dash of an extraordinarily loud diesel truck, and watched the world go by, unfazed. When she arrived in Omaha, I said hello for the very first time and set her down in the middle of the floor. I let her go explore while I carried in the kitty courier’s belongings, and she immediately began following me from room to room, bounding after my feet like a tiny, friendly antelope. She had no fear, and wanted to be friends, ASAP.

My other cat, Genevieve (GenV), reacted better than I expected. She looked at the kitten with a hilarious “…the hell?” expression, and followed her around to determine what she was. There was a small amount of half-hearted hissing and a great deal of pupil-dilating, but she didn’t attack and she didn’t run away, and that’s a middle-ground I can live with.

That first night, I expected the kitten to explore the place, and maybe curl up on the couch with my courier friend, who smelled like home. But as soon as I turned out my bedroom light and crawled into bed, I felt a very dainty tug at the sheets and a small “mew!” as the kitten clambered up into bed with me. She immediately marched right up to my pillow, climbed on top of it, and settled down, squooshed up against my face and purring as if to say, “Do you mind if I—zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.” She slept there the entire night. I couldn’t sleep, I was smiling so hard. Plus I had a cat on my face.

The days are filled with playing and napping. She plays so hard she puts herself into a little catnap coma, rests up, and then comes back for more. She is especially adept at climbing and jumping, often both at the same time since she has learned how to take a flying leap toward a person’s lap and use her little claws as exceptionally small, needle-like grappling hooks. While everything in my apartment is a toy (including other living beings, much to GenV’s dismay), some things amuse her more than others: shoelaces, table legs, lint. I have a black filing box that sits on the floor, and it is just shiny enough for the kitten to see her reflection in it. She demands that her new friend be let out of the box, and has run head-first into the side of it without ever slowing down. Twice.

My computer desk has a pull-out tray for the keyboard, and when it is retracted into the body of the desk, makes for an enticing little cubby hole. Twice now, I have come home to find the kitten inside the tray, lying on the keyboard. Yesterday she wrote half an email to my Blockbuster Online account, and today she dialed into the Adobe Help and Support Center. Sometimes, when I am typing on the half-pulled-out tray, she will be behind the keyboard, and I will occasionally see a tiny little paw reach out and swipe at my typing fingers from the depths of the desk. I’ve lost count of the number of &s and %s I’ve deleted in this post alone.

When playtime is over, and she gets to feeling cuddly, she is beyond affectionate. She climbs up onto my chest, licking my nose and face and mewing softly. Then she shimmies up onto my shoulder and perches there like the fuzziest parrot ever, rubbing up against my cheek with hers. She eventually settles into a little rumbling, purring ball on my shoulder and falls asleep, occasionally stirring to lick my ear until I can’t stand it anymore. I think about how I have the sweetest little cutie patootie ever, and then she wakes up with a second wind and launches herself into my ponytail, claws first.

GenV is keeping herself slightly more scarce than usual, but is surprisingly tolerant, in general. Last night, at bedtime, she jumped into bed with me and parked herself determinedly on my pillow, next to my chest. The kitten tried to follow suit, and GenV gave her a look that clearly said, “Um, NO. Mine. Deal with it.” The kitten looked at GenV, and looked at me, and settled down gingerly next to the both of us. The three of us slept together like that all night, with no bloodshed. I think this may work. I also think I need a bigger bed. Or at least more pillows.

My kitten is perfect, except...she doesn’t have a name.

I need help. I want an interesting name, but one that suits her. I’m considering all sorts of avenues: literary and historical figures, artists, movie stars, abstract forms of punctuation. I like things that are clever in total, but can be shortened to a cute nickname. I’d like to choose something that is interesting and unique, and maybe even clever. I am not opposed to irony.

As a result of polling everyone I know, and several people I don’t, I’ve had lots of suggestions, but I’m still fishing for just a few more before I make this life-altering decision. What better podium for solicitation than an audience of international readers? So I’m calling upon you, my trusted friends, and people I’ve never met, to Name My Cat. I know you have an opinion, and I want to hear it. Vote! Write-in nominations are more than welcome in the form of a Comment.

Now, please excuse me. The darling sleeping bundle has awoken, and is trying to fit her entire head into a half-full (half-empty?) water glass. GenV is imploring me not to keep her from drowning, but I think I had better.

	Name my cat!
Isabelle (Izzy) Chammomile (Cammy) Pinot Grigio (PG) Cricket Gidget June Bug Chloe Emma Abigail (Abby) Maya
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