PETS

Don't read the following if you want to avoid heart-warming and tear-jerking stories of departed pets.

Alphonse is my current cat, born and adopted in summer 2006. Has a very playfully aggressive personality, and claws to match. Easily falls into routines and habits, which he takes a long time to get tired of (although it does happen eventually). Every day and evening spent with him in the house is a fierce reminder of how dull things would be around here if he were a dog. My favourite thing that he does is lay down crushed against the side of my face while I sleep in the morning. It's so sweet. The most adorable thing he ever did was probably when he was first brought home: as soon as he was in the door, he made a beeline for the pieces of my Alphonse Elric armour (his namesake) I'd been crafting that summer.	Alphonse
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Carrie	Carrie is the name of my house in Baltimore. She has that name because she's a Carriage house. Chosen 15% because of her price, 15% because of her location, but 70% because of her personality, that old Spanish villa look of hers is something I fell in love with at first sight.
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Bilbo was a strong and sturdy plant of unknown species nurtured for years by my mother, and given to me when I moved to Baltimore. In the first few months of 2007, he took a turn for the worse and sadly eventually departed for the Gray Havens. I have a strong suspicion that Alphonse's disrespect for what he didn't realize what another living pet in the house may have been at the root of Bilbo's fate. I now gauge that Carrie may not be a good place to have a new vegetal pet, unless I could hang it from the ceiling, where it could be safe from feline life.	Bilbo
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Mac & Blain	I've had many computers in my life (a 386 and a Pentium while living at home, a conjugal one in Virginia, a temperamental eMachines in Silver Spring, and my current one in Baltimore) and certainly there's always been a fleeting idea of giving them names. "Fong" and "Wicked Bugger" were always general ideas, but as closely as I worked with these machines, the habit of calling them by name never sunk in. When I bought a laptop however, many factors conspired causing me to assign a good name and stick with it. The fact that I'd named several other unusual things in that recent time period put me in the right mindframe, first of all. Also, the fact that this was both my first laptop and my first mac really gave it a "new kid on the block" feel, worthy of a good handle. But the best reason remains that I came up with the perfect name. One might think that calling him "Mac" was merely a gratuitous reference to his brand, but his first and foremost namesake is Bill Duke's character in Predator. When I acquired Mac, I was in the thick of my Predator novelization and hence had a very special connection to those characters. When I later purchased a portable music keyboard (as it's been the purpose of this investment all along to have a portable mac-based composition studio) I just had to stay in the same theme and call it "Blain". Because Blain plugs into Mac, of course.
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In my last months in Silver Spring, Lina was my last companion, until she fell prey to an unexpected seizure, just before I moved to Baltimore. I'd gotten her when I lived in Sterling, and brought her, along with Gourry, when I moved to Silver Spring. She was a cuddly little cat, a little overweight (possibly due to a gland disorder), and consequently not able to clean herself all too well, but incredibly sweet, and whose very existance was a miracle. She'd been found by a couple of boys as a one-week newborn, literally by the side of road. They brought her in a nearby pet store, in which, fate would have it, my then-wife happened to be at that moment. Lina was given to a lady to take to the vet. My wife stalked the lady like a hound, then went in after her to ask the vet if she could take the Lina, which the vet was only too happy to oblige. Lina's survival was a indeed a miracle, and although she died young, the few years of life she was afforded were on borrowed time, and one can only be grateful for that. You could tell she always was of frail health. She barely survived her spaying, which is supposed to be a routine operation. I've always been thankful for my wife's quick-thinking in bringing her home, and especially for those two anonymous boys who rescued her from that ditch. If only I could meet them today and buy them ice cream... Lina was buried in the same spot where I'd already buried Vash and Knives: by an uprooted tree stump in the park near my Silver Spring apartment. Lina never used to meow: she had that tiny little adorable squeaky noise she always made, but never a true meow.	Lina
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Herbert	As Vash, my poinsettia taken from work, was reaching that "is it already dead or does it still have a chance" phase, I noticed a tiny little sprout in his pot just as I was about to empty it. Sure enough, there was a mysterious, unidentified new plant (definitely not a pointsettia) growing from Vash's soil. I nurtured this little guy like no plant before or since. Not only because it almost felt like Vash's progeny and legacy, but also because I'd never felt the paternal feeling of caring for a plant from birth. He was so unbelievably frail! But he kept growing and growing, so much that he literally needed a stand at some point. Alas, it's amazing the damage being even just slightly late in watering can do... I always felt terrible for losing him, and although I can keep telling myself I did everything I could and tried every kind of plant food, I'll still always feel it was my negligence that hurt him in the first place. If one can ever be said to love a plant like a regular animal pet, this was it.
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I rescued Knives from the pantry trashcan at my work shortly after that year's holiday season (it was probably 2003 or 2004), when all the people who adopted a poinsettia suddenly get tired of how frazzled it looks and casually decide to just murder it. You woulnd't expect to find a box of kittens in the trash, would you? Then why a plant? Who knows how many others get tossed aside like that every year, but at least Knives was one I could rescue. I already had Vash at home, my own adopted poinsettia, so I kept Knives at work (the fact that they lived divergent lives an interesting parallel with their namesakes). Interestingly, my windowless office turned out to be a better environment for a poinsettia than my Silver Spring apartment, since Knives lasted much longer. But in the end, he reached the end of his rope. I carried him home and buried him in the same spot as Vash.	Knives
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Vash	The first time I noticed my work was giving out the atrium's poinsettia after each holiday season, I adopted one and thought the name Vash was appropriate for his vegetal nature. I quickly learned how difficult it can be giving just the right amount of sunlight and water to a poinsettia, and Vash didn't last.
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Gourry was the first pet my Sterling family got. A Springfield acquaintance of my then-wife was giving out few-months-old kittens and I just fell for Gourry. Many times we reflected the name Xellos might have been more appropriate because he was more mischievous than dumb. He was, however, a very tall, lean and strong cat. When we later got Lina, we were happy to see him act very motherly for this poor needy newborn (that is, until she grew up and he started playing rough with her). I brought both of them to Silver Spring when I moved, and althrough I could tell Gourry was pretty miserable to be restrained to such a small place, at least they were wonderfully adorable company to each other. Sadly, I had to give Gourry away after a kidney operation that saved his life from urinal blockage. Only his own raw strength and stamina saved him: my own quick-thinking was shamelessly not quick at all, considering I waited days to bring him to the vet. Although he regained all his strength after weeks of convalescence, the damage the catheter did to him ruined his retention capabilities, and drop by drop the resulting smell in the apartment started causing trouble, threatening to have me evicted. Plus, the pill-giving situation was a savage, hostile period of both of us, totally undermining our normally loving relation. After weeks of searching, I finally found a farm in West Virginia for him to live on. Although it broke my heart, I left him with a bunch of new horse, cow, dog and cat friends, and lots more space to run. To this day, Gourry might very possibly be alive and well, but I haven't heard anything since I left him. The non-finite nature of the break causes me to miss him more than any other pet.	Gourry
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Katrina	She's been my sewing machine since my early years of cosplaying, and I've not once since found reason to yearn for a new one. Sure, she's needed a few cleanings every now and then, but never did I tell myself "Oh I wish my machine had this-or-that feature." One might consider giving a name to a house unusual, but to a sewing machine, that's outright fruity, I realize. It came from a particularly looney period where I thought it'd be funny to randomly generate names for all my appliances using my old Warhammer rulebook. I gave names to everything: camera, DVD player, etc. But I didn't write any of them down, and interestingly, Katrina is the only appliance whose name really stuck. So, as loopy as the notion might sound, that mere fact hints at some kind of meaning, which I feel should be respected.
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Nicknamed 'Mad', Amadeus was named after Wolfgang Mozart, because she was black-and-white like a piano. Well the movie was still recent and it had stuck in me and my sister's heads. One of the last years that we both went to La ferme d'André summer camp (I must've been younger than 10), we both decided to adopt one of the farm's kittens being given away, and prepared as convincing a number as can be imagined to get our parents to agree. In the end they had no choice, confronted with four puppy-dog eyes, and two kitten ones. Having been born a farm, Amadeus of course needed severe vet work to get nasty parasites off and out of her, but she lived the rest of her life in perfect health. In her last years, she did develop an eye condition, but it thankfully didn't seem to be causing her pain. As much as I've always loved Sidony, our first cat, Mad was really my true confident during my teenage years, one who welcomed the outpour of undirected affection I had, whereas Sidony squirmed more than half the time you tried to hold him. It stands to reason that I felt I'd abandonned her more than anyone else when I moved to Virginia. I knew my family and friends, as much as we'd miss each other, would get on without me, but with Mad, it felt like I was deserting her. I especially feel bad not having been there when she died.	Amadeus
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Sidony	Not counting the ones that came before or died shortly after I was born, Sidony was our first pet. Officially, he was really my sister's pet. She's the one who'd asked for a cat, and got it as a birthday present, adopted from her first-grade teacher. But in her teenage years, seeing as she was succeeding at being trendy (unlike me), I always got the feeling she felt like she'd outgrown the concept of having a cat. The other hint I got was also that she developped a passion for huskies (one that I share too, as far as dogs go). And since Amadeus, our other cat, was really my own close confidant, Sidony really became his own man, the cat of the house, with attitude to match. He was in fact probably best company for my parents. But I still loved him very much, felt sad at leaving him behind when I moved out, and didn't hesitate to offer to pay for his funeral arrangements when he passed away in the early 2000s. He never truly got along with my sister's dogs (especially Fenris) until she moved out, and I always felt sorry for him having to have his dominance challenged in his golden years like that. Just like Amadeus, he lived very old and in good health. In the end, old age took its toll on him, thinning him to a mere skeleton of a cat, literally. The truly heartbreaking part was that after my parents found him lifeless in the basement, Amadeus was later seen moaning in grief stand right by the spot where he fell.