My mom sort of inherited her Oscar when it's rightful owner moved away... The name came with him...
That's kind of what happened with Houdini, too - not a name I would pick, but she's had it for 8 years so I'm not about to change it. It's been giving me a start every time "Houdini poisoned?" comes across my news crawl this morning.
When a co-worker of mine and her husband both retired, they were going to be spending most of the time traveling in their RV. They took a dog and one cat with them, but didn't think Houdini would take to the lifestyle very well. Because I've always lived in apartments, I hadn't been able to have a pet since I was a kid, but the management at my current place had started allowing pets early last year, so I offered to take Houdini. I told the management about it last summer when the retirement was being planned. When the retirement actually happened and Houdini moved in last November, I told the management she'd arrived, and the response was, "
What?! You can't have a cat!" (Seems they had decided to revert to the old policy without saying anything.) They finally relented because I've lived here for so long - I
wanted them to admit they'd told me I could have her, but, oh, well, we'll take what we can get.
Here's a picture I would never show anyone but pet lovers
- but it's the only time I've been able to get her eye colors right, with yellow on the outside and black in the middle (and, yes, that's the bench I sit on when I'm at my computer, which happens to have room for both of us - they know where to find us, don't they?
):
I grew up with dogs, and this is my first experience with a cat, so I'm learning a lot.
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ETA: I've read the nice posts about my website - but I decided to post in this thread first and have used up all my time (looking at pictures), so I'll have to get to those later.