The names!

Of course! How could I post about the kittens and not mention their names?? Well, possibly because we still call them "The Kittens" much of the time. This sort of works given that they're rarely more that two feet apart.

SO. We decided that Sophie and I would name the little girl. I voted for Lila, not telling anyone that I had in mind Lila Quartermaine from General Hospital. I was more of a Edge of Night watcher, but I was sucked into the Port Charles vortex during Laura and Scotty's wedding, which everyone in my dorm skipped classes to watch in the our main lounge. Was Lila Quartermaine the best or what? No matter how horrible everyone was around her, she was lovely, kind, and gracious. I loved it when the Quartermaines lost all their money (momentarily, thank goodness—poor people are not nearly as interesting on television), and Lila and her maid kept the family going by marketing their homemade relish: Piccalila. Brilliant.

Sophie thought the name was . . . ok. She preferred a modification, Lily, which I agreed to because I think it is also a lovely name and because I am such a reasonable person.

Husband, preferring mythological names (his late was cat named Zeus), selected the name Loki, the Norse god of fire, known for trickery and shape-shifting.

Not bad for a little cat who is fast as greased lightening, but I cannot remove from my mind Wagner's character Loge (the German version of Loki) in Das Rheingold. 

Loge gives advice to Wotan, the ruler of the god—usually very bad advice, at least for Wotan. Loge is the ultimate consultant. But Sophie, who was a supernumerary in the San Francisco Opera's production of Das Rheingold, correctly remembers Loge as one of the best characters, and Stefan Margita portrayed him with an absolutely amazing tenor voice that I will always remember. And while a little Wagnarian character running around my house is not what I had in mind (if it were I could have named the little girl Freia, goddess of youth and beauty), I've kept this also to myself because I am, as I have noted, a very reasonable person.