I named him Toad when he was a wee babe. 

Except the womenfolk threw a hissy fit. 

The amusing thing was, they couldn’t come up with a good alternative.

Now we need to be clear on this.  I don’t care for cats.  Never have.  They are too wussy.

But Toad and I have connected, at least somewhat.  For sure at claw and teeth levels.

This fellow named Toad, though, has several things about him that make him a bit more definable, and dare I say, affable.

He showers with me occasionally.  Not so much anymore, but he used to a fair bit.  Most of the time he’ll sit at the back of the shower, batting away at the streams of water and just as much trying to shake them off.  Sometimes he’ll really get into it and will be comically sitting in a puddle of water under the faucet, batting at drops of water coming off the faucet while the shower runs full stream overhead.  Comically, as in delayed comically.  Because I know he doesn’t know he is sitting in a puddle of water, since I have adjusted the temperature of the water to just the right amount of lukewarm, so he won’t realize until he is totally soaked.  And suddenly, he realizes.  He comes flying right by me and out the back of the shower, blasting water everywhere.  Talk about a strung out stringy looking cat.  His name should have stayed Toad. 

He bites. That’s his love language for sure.  I’ll take a lot more abuse from a cat if he bites.  If all they do is purr and sit on your lap, no way.  You ought to see how the womenfolk flitz from room to room when they know he is mad.  I can tell by their panicky looks toward their ankles that he has been denied his food by them and is on the prowl to make up for it.  (The womenfolk have put him on a diet.  I told him it was okay to bite their ankles in this instance.)  Just yesterday, I heard a chirp and then a somewhat agonized yelp from the sweet daughter.  Upon inquiry, it seems she saw the dude stalking her ankles, tried to circumvent the situation, and lost.  Score!  One more thing about his biting; he has redefined unsuspecting.  You try to pet him (rare occasion) and you hear a mild, faraway purr thrumming to life.  You stroke him once more, and, BAM!  They usually aren’t such bad bites, although I’ve had a welt or two last a couple of hours after he sank his fangs in.  Just the other day, I thought I had him outwitted.  I was wearing a long-sleeved shirt and thought, “This will have him fit to be choked.  When he goes to bite me, he’ll get a mouthful of sleeve.  Let’s see what his expression is then.”  You know that little bump of bone on the outside of your wrist?  Yeah, well.  There was no sleeve there.  And he laughed at my expression.

He hisses.  All in fun, to be sure.  Sometimes I need to hold him tight, on the odd occasion he has been misbehaving.  He complains and mutters perverse and dire things at me.  And then, suddenly out of the blue, he hisses at me as if I’m the one to blame.  But when I let him go, he never runs off like a mad cat would.  He stays close by.  You can tell he really appreciated the bonding time, even if he didn’t know how to properly show it.

Oh, and one more thing.  He likes pasta noodles.  Cooked, of course, and fed by hand to him one at a time.  

It seemed, backing up a little, that the ladies held a mutiny on his name.  And that was back when he was quite young and easily intimidated.  So, during that time, they came up with the name of Cricket.  I quickly dissented, but it was three against one, if you count the cat in on their side.  And he seemed, as I said earlier, rather intimidated by them.  He thought what he did next was a strategic move on his part.  It was.  It got him named something other than Cricket.  But it took a fair bit of forbearance on my part. 

He started stalking my earbuds.  I couldn’t believe it at first, but then again, cats have never been known to possess huge amounts of common sense.  I came out to the living room early one morning to find my favorite set (I use the kind with wires to hook up to my computer) vandalized.  One bud had a cord, one had nothing at all.  Several shriveled up, chewed on pieces lay nearby.  I bought a $6 pair from Walmart the next time I was there.  I hated them.  One side was loud and the other quiet.  And any time the cord rubbed against my shirt it amplified that scratchy sound to my ears. (I have scratchy shirts)

But I made sure to store them up on the bookcase where the cat was forbidden to jump. 

Until I forgot to store them there.  I wasn’t as surprised to see this set scrapped.  The cat had been looking at them with lustful burning eyes for a few days already.

It dawned on me after that set scratched out that I might be able to get a bargain on Ebay.  I did.  Two pairs for two dollars.  And they worked like the first set.  I was very pleased. 

This time, though, I had them where they should be, and somehow that dude got them and had them mangled before I caught him at it.

I was informed, shortly thereafter, that I needed to pick up some medication for the cat at the local vet office.

Which I did.  And while I was there, the lady asked me what the cat’s name was so they could enter him into their system.

“His name is Earbud,” I said.

And, thus he is registered, much to his own chagrin. 

Just the other day, my daughter was opening the mail, saw a bill from the vet, and after a moment’s glance threw it down with a sniff of disgust.  (I was going to say snort, but that wouldn’t be the thing to write about a nice girl like her.)

I looked at it, and in plain bold lettering it said, Name—Earbud—Dewormer.

The ladies still call him Cricket, although he and I know the truth of the matter. 

I registered him as Earbud to keep him humble, but he knows, and I know, his real name is Toad.