We used to have one cat. Rooster. Rooster is a Maine Coon, which is a breed of cat that weighs 15 to 20 pounds and resembles a raccoon, but puffier, and more cat-like. Rooster weighs closer to 20 pounds than 15. When he lies on his back in the middle of the floor, as he often does, he looks kind of like a really big sea anemone with a cat head on one end.
Now we have a second cat. Mike Tyson. Mike Tyson is a girl cat (Rooster is a boy cat). Mike Tyson is a stray that turned up at my wife’s work. Liz(my wife)’s office mate starting calling her (the cat, not Liz) Mike Tyson because she was missing part of her ear. At some point, she had been caught and spayed and then earmarked to indicate this. Technically, then, she should be Holyfield, but as we soon came to find out, the name actually makes a lot of sense.
It makes a lot of sense because Mike Tyson is a very loving and affectionate cat that likes to show her love and affection by biting. She also shows dissatisfaction by biting, as well as excitement and frustration. In short, Mike Tyson, like Mike Tyson, likes to bite. She bites fingers, mostly. And toes. And Rooster. And the carpet. Sometimes she just starts biting the carpet.
Mike Tyson is a calico. Apparently calicos are notoriously naughty. I didn’t know this until recently. My grandparents had a calico cat for a while when I was a kid. Her name was Buttercup. I don’t remember much about Buttercup, except that one day she got caught in the automatic garage door. That was the end of Buttercup.
B.H. James 