So if you have children, and those children are breathing, then you will be asked at least twice a week if they can get a pet. This will happen for all eternity, or until you buy them a pet, whichever comes first.

Our kids have been begging and pleading us to get a pet for years now. It just wasn’t something that my wife and I were too interested in, though. I mean, we already have 3 creatures to feed, clean up after, and nurture. And there is a marginal chance that those creatures will be able to support us when we get old! Do we really want another creature that has no chance of getting rich and sending us to that really great nursing home?!

Turns out, I guess we do. Last Christmas, our family had the biggest change since the Great Eastern Migration of ’12: we added a new member. A furry orange cat, to be specific.

Picking the cat was a new experience for us. Perhaps you seasoned pet owners out there will laugh, but it just felt weird to see a living creature go on sale. Not FOR SALE, mind you, but ON SALE, like ‘buy this cat in the next week for 50% off!’. Does that weird anyone else out? Well, we went to several places in the course of several days, saw a million cats, and then went back and bought the very first cat that we looked at. She is a beautiful 2-year old orange cat.

Now, before all this started, I would have thought that we’d get a cat, and probably name it a nice normal cat name, like Aristophanes or Mungojerrie. However, somewhere along all that cat shopping, I started thinking about my favorite comic strip. I refer, of course, to the illustrious Bill Watterson and his boy-and-tiger duo, Calvin and Hobbes. Some of my fondest memories involve lazy summer days at Barnes and Noble reclining in their couches reading ol’ C&H all afternoon. I’ve even got my boys reading it now!

Well, I decided that I couldn’t let an opportunity like picking a cat name pass us by. All I had to do was try and figure out a way to convince the rest of the members of my family. Son #1 was easy – he loves C&H, too. Son’s 2 and 3 were trickier, but I managed to get them on board by leaving out some well placed comics. Now, to get my wife. This was where things got tough. She insisted that Hobbes was a boy’s name. But I knew in my heart of hearts that the animal we were buying wanted us to call her Hobbes. So we all met in the middle, and gave her a proper female name:
Mrs. Hobbes Fluffypants

And now we’re all happy… Er, I’m happy, and the boys are happy and Mindy, well, she is optimistic about having another female in the house, even if she’s named after a male tiger and probably won’t get rich someday and set us up in that expensive retirement community.