Clara, The Impossible Cat

I hope you had a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Our Christmas was nice. It was peaceful and free of unwanted stress or drama. Just as we like. EJ cooked us a nice Christmas dinner. We had our favorite holiday treats and relaxed. Sometimes we give each other gifts for Christmas. Sometimes we don’t. This year we didn’t get each other gifts. Until, unexpectedly, we did.

EJ saw that someone he follows at Twitter/X was trying to rehome one of her young barn cats. She and her husband live in the same general region as we do so he told them that we’d adopt her. EJ arranged that we’d meet on December 27 at a parking lot in a town approximately halfway between us. We got there a few minutes before the other couple did so we had enough time to stop at a Cops & Donuts Bakery for some donuts. The bakery has an interesting history. There is a doughnut shop and bakery in Clare, Michigan, that has been in constant operation since 1896. The business was within weeks of closing when the nine members of the Clare Police Department came to the rescue and bought it and renamed it “Cops & Donuts.” They have since expanded to other locations, one of which we went to on Friday. You can read their whole story at their Cops & Donuts website. EJ and I bought two donuts each. I chose two different types of Bismarks (my favorite!) and EJ chose a Long John and an apple fritter. We each ate one on the way home and the other we saved for the next day’s breakfast.

We adore our new cat. She is young–older than a kitten, but not yet full grown. She’s mostly all black with a triangle of white on her chest. The tips of her toes on her back feet have a tiny bit of white as well. Surprisingly, people tend not to adopt black cats, but we love them. Our black cats have always been extremely cuddly.

On the way home, EJ and I discussed names. We have often had multiple cats at the same time and over the years we have given them theme names. Like ending all the names with “Kat”: Ellie Kat, Bob Kat, Kit Kat, Thom Kat, and Fraidy Kat. We had three cats we gave Star Wars names to: Luke, Han, and Anakin, although we had to change Anakin’s name to “Annie” when we realized that “he” was a “she.” Annie sang very beautifully with extra flourishes added in. In recent years, we’ve given mostly old fashion-sounding names to our animals, such as Theo, Madeline, and Timmy. We are continuing with this theme. We considered naming our new cat “Holly” because we adopted her during the Christmas season, but she doesn’t really look like a Holly. We liked “Matilda” but it sounded too long for a first name so we shortened it to “Tilly.” We finally ended up with another name, but I’ll get to that in the next paragraph.

Not “Tilly” is very sweet and cuddly and purrs, purrs, purrs when we hold her, but she is also very shy and likes to hide. We know that it can take a while for a new animal to adjust so we give her time to get used to her new home, but we also make sure we spend time holding her so she feels safe and loved. When we can find her, that is. Because she is black, she blends in to the shadows and is very difficult to find. Sometimes we catch a glimpse of her peering at us around a corner but then she vanishes–almost as if she has teleported. We have exclaimed so much that it is almost impossible to find her, that EJ finally suggested we name her “Clara, the Impossible Cat,” which is a nod to “Clara, the Impossible Girl,” one of the Doctor’s companions in the Doctor Who science fiction series. The term “The Impossible Girl” encapsulates the enigma surrounding Clara’s existence and her ability to appear in different timelines, defying the usual rules of time and space in the Doctor Who universe. So Tilly has become Clara. I used “Matilda” as her middle name.

Meet sweet Clara Matilda, our Impossible Cat, who has the ability to defy time and space by vanishing into the shadows:

We have been careful in how we introduce Clara to the other pets, especially Hannah, who tends to have strong likes and dislikes and merely tolerate cats. This is the first new cat we’ve brought into our home since we adopted Hannah (the others were already here) so we weren’t sure how she’d react. We’ve let Hannah know that Clara is now part of the family. We have shown Hannah that we love Clara–and also that we love her. We have sat near Hannah with Clara in our arms. Hannah’s reaction? She refuses to look at Clara. She also refuses to look at EJ or me if we are holding Clara. If we get in front of her with the cat, she deliberately turns her head away. It’s rather funny. We tell Hannah to stop being ridiculous. But, of course, she doesn’t listen. It might be faster if Hannah wasn’t so jealous and Clara wasn’t so shy, but I think they’ll get there. Baby steps.

As for Timmy? He mostly ignores Clara. If they get close, Timmy hisses at her. But that is pretty normal behavior when we’ve brought a new cat into the family. Timmy often sits on EJ’s lap and EJ thinks he’s angry that Clara is now sometimes in “HIS” place. It takes time. Baby steps.

Our tradition on New Year’s Eve has been to make pizza and eat chips while we watch a long movie such as Lord of the Rings. When we were younger, we’d watch all the Lord of the Rings movies over two days, staying up all night if we had to. These days we don’t stay up until midnight. This year EJ only got New Year’s Day off from work. He had to work on New Year’s Eve. He tried to convince his company to let him have New Year’s Eve off because that is the REAL holiday. New Year’s Day is just the recovery day for those who drink, which we don’t. His company was not persuaded. I suspect that they didn’t want to give employees New Year’s Eve off and have them come to work the next day with hangovers. That makes sense. But because EJ had to work, we didn’t celebrate the new year. Oh, well. I had a quiet evening and went to bed at the normal time.

Sort of.

I shut Hannah in the bedroom with me and the cats out. I wanted Clara to be able to explore the house and I didn’t want to worry about her and Hannah having an unsupervised encounter in the night. I shut Timmy out because I didn’t want him scratching to get out of the bedroom if I kept him in and I wanted him to have access to the litter box. The plan sounded good. But Timmy wanted inside the bedroom and he yowled and rattled the door for two hours before finally shutting up when I banged on the door. Sigh. Last night I just kept the bedroom door open and there were no problems. I shouldn’t have been concerned. Clara is the Impossible Cat who knows how to defy time and space by vanishing into the shadows.