The Cat With Many Names

I've not done any of the Scalzi "Assignments..."  in fact, I only hear about them from the journals I read.  I don't actually go checking Scalzi's journal for the Assignment of the Week.  But I heard tell that he suggested writing about "old animals."  THAT was a subject I could warm to.

This boy came to live with us in July of 1978.  He was supposed to be a birthday gift for my husband...as much as you can make a "gift" of one life to another.  In one of those silly "what if" conversations we had as newlyweds, we decided we would name any male progeny we produced "Andrew Edward."  We must've known even then that we wouldn't be having kids, because the kitty got the name.
All kittens mew, and mew loudly, especially when they're fresh from the comfort of Mom and the rest of the litter.  Andy was no exception...he had a pretty impressive set of kitten pipes.  A couple of months down the road, when most kitties would have outgrown that kittenish yowling, we came to realize that Andrew would not only retain this characteristic, but his voice would mature and mellow into a cross between an air-raid siren and a foghorn.  In fact, there's no real way to describe the sound that came out of his face.  (We DO have one example of it captured on an old video...I would be tempted to make an audio entry of it, but the phone line would not do it justice.)  Mealtime--I call it feeding time at the zoo--was always something to hear.  The other cats (at one point, Andrew had seven "siblings") would put their two cents in...seven cats mewing politely for their dinner is noise enough.  But when number eight is bellowing like a young bull being castrated, you'd best jump up off that recliner and make with the cat food.  Now! 
Andy was the first cat I ever met who would "fetch."  We found this out quite by accident...we bought him some of those cute little foam "kitty toy" balls, thinking he would have fun batting them around.  Tossed one down the hall; Andy goes tearing after it, bats it around a bit, looks at it...you can see the wheels turning. And he picks it up in his mouth, trots back up the hall, and politely drops it at our feet.  "Throw it again.  It isn't any fun when I have to make it move!" He would "retrieve" that ball for as long as you wanted to throw it...until he was panting like a...well, I won't say it.  I don't want to insult his memory!  But he DID resemble a small, orange and white German shepard...  (Sorry, Roo!)
I could fill a book with Andrew stories.  No room, or time, for that here.  But here's something that anyone who knew Andrew knew about him.  He was the Cat of Many Names.  I've written this before---it's a tradition in our family that an animal never seems to retain its orignal name.  All of our cats have several, and they will answer to most of them.  Andy was the champ, however.  Of course, he was with us for many years, so there was plenty of time for him to rack up the names.  Here is the list of all I remember:
Andrew Edward:  Andrew, Andy, Roo, Rooter Roo, Two Roos, TwoRoos Lautrec, An-you (conferred on him by one of my nieces...we actually changed the spelling to "On-you," because that was where he always wanted to be...), Nyou-Nyou, Andy Eddy, Eddy Spaghetti (after his favorite food), Edvard Spagednadze (the Russian skater version); when he got old and FAT, we added Lucky Belly and King Ookie-Ookie (or just Ook) because he'd sit like Buddha, licking his oversized belly and making these little "ook" sounds.  And of course, there was "Andrew Goddammit," the name we hollered at him when he would chase his sister Percy around the house just to hear her scream. 
At the age of sixteen, Andy became deathly ill---at a time when we were, of course, totally broke. Even so, we spent an obscene amount of money getting him diagnosed and treated.  Never gave it a second thought, really, even when one particularly insensitive veterinarian suggested that we might want to put him to sleep rather than invest that kind of money into a sixteen-year-old cat.  It turned out he had developed diabetes...once we figured it out, it was a relatively simple and inexpensive fix to buy the insulin and shoot him up twice a day.  He was with us for two more years, living the quieter, gentler life of the "Old Gentleman Cat"...except for the voice...he never lost THAT.
Andy died in 1996 at the age of eighteen.  Long time ago...old cat.  But I can hardly see to type, thinking about it.  Ah, I still miss him!