Pedigree

Okay, so I’ve sent in the forms to register the kittens. They are purebred Devon Rex kittens, a sort of very, very short haired cat that tends to be less allergenic. Luckily, this lack of allergy part seems to be true and I can pet them with abandon. On the forms I need to register their purebred names. It’s all part of the purebred world where kitten births are registered in birth certificates. My first instinct was to register some sort of lighthearted, funny, spoof names, but then I had second thoughts. It doesn’t matter so much for Rex because Rex is of “pet” quality, so he will be neutered and will not sire any kittens. His name will not live on. But Pearl, Pearl is special. She is, according to the breeder, of “show” quality. And she is a pretty amazing little cat. The breeder asked how I would feel about having a litter of kittens with her as the mother. Well, that sounded like it might be fun, so we agreed to try to breed her at some point in the future. If we do, her name will be on the pedigree of her offspring and their offspring and so on.

The first name on the pedigree is the name of the cattery, in this case, Castilleja. I chose the name Pearl for the girl and Rees chose the name Rex for the boy. So their registered names would be Castilleja and something Pearl or something Rex. They are “brown mackerel tabbies” and when I looked into the origin of tabbies, it turns out it was a kind of silk with a watered stripy look that was made in the Attabiyah district of Baghdad. Attabiyah became atabbi and then tabby and the cats with patterns similar to the silk were called tabby cats.

After some debate about names, we settled on Catilleja’s Attabiyah Pearl for Pearl (suitably exotic for a family tree) and Castilleja’s Tabbysaurus Rex for Rex (suitably silly for him and our family). And, tiny as they are, they really do live up to their names.

And that’s not all. The breeder now wants me to show Pearl at a cat show in September in Denver, this year's site of "Devon Heaven." Hmmm, I seem to be slowly getting drawn into this purebred world. Maybe I will get those cat motif checks after all. Stay tuned.