So Bean and I have two cats. The first one we call Darby Crash, but this post is about our second cat, which really should be called our first, since we got her first.
This is Scotia Jones:
Always striving to "find herself," this is Scotia during her Wiccan phase
We got her from an animal shelter in East L.A., which means, a) she likely speaks better Spanish than English, and b) she is a badass. No, seriously. She doesn’t take any shit.
When we found her, she was the most playful of the rescue cats, the only one batting a paw out of the cage at me. Turns out, she was trying to claw my face off. I had no idea. Her subtleties, at the time, were lost on me, but of course now I’m on to her.
The shelter told us she was about 1 year old and previously a stray. Then, after we made our donation and took her to get her obligatory spaying, they told us she was pregnant. Poor, tough broad. Gang-raped by tomcats in some barrio back alley most likely, or else, turning tricks for canned fish. It’s an old story.
I should explain about the name. Around the time Bean and I first started dating we had occasion to take a long road trip. During the trip we made up the word “scotia” (pronounced like “Nova Scotia”), thought it sounded cool, and tried to think of how we could use it in a sentence to greatest effect. We wanted it to infect the American lexicon so deeply that the word would eventually find its place in the OED and we, through “scotia,” would live forever. Instead, we got about 16 years of cat (20 if she quits smoking).
Despite coming up with awesome phrases like, “That’s so scotia!” and “You’ll be fine if you put your scotia face on,” or my personal favorite, “Scotia the nougat, and you’ll never go hungry again!” we never found a good angle on our new word, so we set it aside.
It wasn’t until a year later, when we decided we were ready to move beyond plants and get an animal that we suddenly realized how we could use our word. We realized it at the same time, right after we brought her home, even though I thought for sure we would name her “Ciehty” (get it?).
The “Jones” part came about because I love blaxploitation movies (as in Black Belt) and also because Scotia’s hard knocks background seemed to lend itself to a name you could imagine hearing the word POW come after, as in Scotia Jones… POW!
She doesn’t like being touched, or affection in general, unless by affection you mean her scratching the shit out of you. Having said that, Darby has really softened her up. Darby pretty much rules over Scotia, which is sad for Scotia but funny for me.
Okay, I’ve reached my limit on writing about my cats. I only felt like I had to write about Scotia Jones because I wrote about Darby Crash. Did you see that? Do you see how easy it is to slip in to talking about your pets as if they were people?
I’m embarrassed you had to see that.
Look, Cats!
Scotia Jones is on the right. No, they aren't related. Yes, I'm sure.
