Gone

It's hard to maintain a blog. This is my second post, after a year.
It's also hard to get attached to something in Vietnam and even harder when they take it away from you. If you leave anything outside your house during the night, it will probably be stolen in the morning. If you have a cat, someone may just kill it or eat it.

Cato, Not Now is no longer with us. Around christmas she suddenly stopped coming home and in Vietnam that means: eaten. I loathe those barbarians who have no respect for others or other people's property. I will probably never find out who did it and my girlfriend won't be of any help. She knows the scumbag who did it will experience a hard time and then we may be in big trouble. I'm afraid when I face that person I might do something I normally don't do. All the frustrations I have picked up in normal daily life in the past three-four Vietnam-years may surface again, resulting in something terrible. Eating my cat is a definite no.

It reminds me of Cato, Not Now's grandmother. I knew that cat, since we got one of her kittens, Cato, Not Now's mother. One day the neighbour we got her from was in tears. Someone she knew had smashed the cat's skull and thrown her onto the roof. He didn't even bother to remove the blood in front of his own door. So she knew who did it and that was it.
All three brothers and sisters of Mimi, Cato, Not Now's father, were stolen by someone. I don't know what happened, but I can imagine it.

We still have two cats and one of them loves roaming around. And he is the one we really got attached to. If something similar happens to him............

Names

Naming a cat is not the same as buying a motorbike. Actually, naming anything is not easy. I am not really a supporter of conventional namings. If I take human beings for example, usually the name has already been decided before birth, making it very unpersonal. In almost all cases the name doesn’t suit the name bearer. You're name is Robert? You don't look like one.

I fancy the approach of the Hash House Harriers. For those of you who don’t know them, it’s a drinking club with a running problem. You can find them all over the world. At the hash you will get a name after a certain amount of runs, say 10. By then the regular runners know you a bit more and the result is that you will get a hash name that really suits you.

In my house is a little cat I just had to keep. Some time ago my other two cats had a very exciting night, resulting in three kittens. One of them was too cute to let go. He is three months old and is unnamed. Now this cat has a certain habit. Whatever I am doing, at any time he may jump on me unexpectedly. Often the timing is very inconvenient and because of this I decided his name should be “Cato, not now!”.

Of course it's from the Pink Panther films, where a butler is forever trying to tackle Clouseau by surprise by leaping out at him from e.g. inside his refrigerator, at very awkward moments, whereupon Clouseau screams, "Not NOW, Cato, not NOWWWW!"

His name works two ways. It personifies his actions and the moment you see him you will immediately say “Hey, that’s a cat!”. And those are the first three letters of his name.