#56 Thoughts on your favorite pet’s personality.

The Bakke children had many pets growing up. Eric and I being the rigid thinkers that we are decided that every hamster should be named Batman and every cat should be named Chad. We picked Batman for obvious reasons. The name Chad still kind of puzzles me. Why Chad? As the Bakke family expanded, our younger siblings did not see the merits of pets just having one name. The first pet to break the rules was Charlotte. Charlotte had a habit of licking all the sauce off of spaghetti.

After Charlotte we had three cats that were the hall of fame, never to be forgotten, pets. First there was Homer. He was named after Homer Simpson. I kind of think of Homer as the original “grumpy cat.” Homer liked to lay around and he didn’t want to be bothered. Homer thought that all seating areas belonged to him. He was almost impossible to move out of a chair. I remember one time having to tip a chair forward so gravity finally moved Homer out of my way. Eventually, Homer had us trained and you would just move to a different chair. Homer had a very gruff meow. It was almost like he was saying “What?” He just couldn’t be bothered. But, oh how we loved that cat. He was kind of like that grumpy Uncle that everyone loves so much. My sister Alyssa loved him so much that I think some people in her college dorm thought she had a boyfriend back home named Homer. Kyle got a little sick of having a cat that wouldn’t do anything but sit there and yell at you so he convinced my parents to get a cat that had some pep in his step and then they got Froot Loop. I remember telling my friend about our two cats and he said that it was sad that Homer had gotten too old to play. I had to set him straight, Homer wasn’t old. Homer was practically a kitten himself, but he chose to live his life like he was a hundred years old.

Froot Loop was the complete opposite of Homer. Froot Loop was the name that the animal shelter had given him. We thought about renaming him but after a few days it was obvious that this cat was INSANE and Froot Loop was the perfect name. Froot Loop was excited that he had a brother Homer. He would, leap, jump and roll around Homer trying to get him to play. Homer was not buying what Froot Loop was selling he would sit there with this crazy kitten rolling all around trying to get him to move. Homer wouldn’t budge. If cats could roll their eyes Homer totally would have rolled his eyes at Froot Loop. Homer and Froot Loop were an amazing team. Homer did nothing, Froot Loop did nothing. Froot Loop loved to escape. I remember one night driving by a construction site and seeing Froot Loop sitting in the drivers seat of a bulldozer. Kyle and I joked that Froot Loop had taken a job as a construction foreman. Sadly, Homer and Froot Loop when to Kitty Heaven only two days apart. We didn’t know if we would find a cat to fill the void and we did with Monk.

Monk came to us with the name “Uncle Elizabeth” from the shelter. We decided to name him after the TV detective Monk. We decided that he must have had a similar amount of neurosis because he spent the first two days as a Bakke hiding under the futon. Monk was a quiet kitty. You could never hear him meow. We always imagined him asking us politely if we could “keep it down.” He was so quiet and surrounded by loud Bakke’s. He would open his mouth like a lion roaring and only a tiny little squeak would come out. One time Monk was down in the basement crying very loudly. It just so happened that this one time tantrum happened after a startling Chicago Bears loss. We decided that Monk must be a bears fan. Monk was a lap cat. He was very content to sit in your lap for hours and then out of no where he would dig his claws into you. I joked that someone must have told Monk that he was filled was helium and that he was going to float away like a balloon and the only way to stay earth bound was to dig your claws in. You could learn a lot from a cat like Monk.