Saturday, November 27, 2010

Introducing Hope

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Marianne claimed her Christmas present this morning:  an exquisite gem of a freshly spayed Bengal cat.  There she is, above.  She's been wandering about our house examining everything and taking the occasional break to disappear into a closet and sleep.

She's very small and very beautiful.

It's been a long time since we've had a female cat in this house and that will take some getting used to.  Plus we've never had a small cat in our house and Bengals are only generations divorced from the wild, so the next few months will be a voyage of discovery for us.

You'll  be getting posts whenever I manage to take a good picture of her.  Which is to say, not all that often.

And her name?


Those with weak stomaches may very well want to leave the theater now . . .

 Marianne and I told our son Sean that we needed a name for a beautiful female cat and expressed a preference for something literary.

"That's easy," he said.  "Name her Hope Mirrlees."

Which was almost perfect.  Its only shortcoming was that it wasn't a pun.  So, on reflection, we decided that the newest member of our family would be called:  Miss Helen Hope Mrrlees.  With the accent on the mrr.

Above:  That's Hopie herself.  The picture gives you only the faintest idea of how lovely she is.

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6 comments:

Tom Lawrence said...

Congratulations. Bengals are special, and she is quite beautiful.

David Stone said...

Truly the Cadillac of feline companions!

HANNAH'S DAD said...

Gorgeous! The pressure to replace my own dear departed becomes that little bit stronger.

> So, on reflection, we decided that the newest member of our family would be called: Miss Helen Hope Mrrlees. With the accent on the mrr.

The pun meets appropriate horribleness requirements - but isn't that pretty much the correct pronunciation anyway? Also, Hope is an excellent name.

And on pronunciation - I was fortunate enough to have a nice chat with Robert Silverberg at the worldcon this year and he said that you would pronounce the second 'W' in your last name, at which point I made grumpy noises about Americans and their phonetic pronunciation. Is this in fact the case?

Matthew Brandi said...
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HANNAH'S DAD said...

Matthew -

> Phonetic pronunciation would be pronunciation conforming to pronunciation?

Phonetic - in this case an acknowledgment that American pronunciation often does make more sense, and a hint that you shouldn't take my post as seriously as you perhaps did :)

Matthew Brandi said...
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