Dear Husband and I’s first kitten together was Ordell. We are both Samuel L. Jackson fans, and were fond of his performance as the gun dealer, Ordell Robie, in the movie Jackie Brown. So when I asked if he had any kitten preferences, he said, “Just get one we can name Ordell.”
So I did.
It was not immediately apparent that it might not be a good idea, in our particular situation, to have a kitten named after a psychotic criminal. Oh, it’s not that he wasn’t sweet. He was adorable and affectionate. But, as he grew long long legs, enough to get him the nickname of “The Muppet,” he was getting more and more energetic.
We tried to play him into the ground, but he’d take it all and come back for more. This was a difficulty.
Dear Husband has a chronic illness, with exhaustion and sleep disruptions as a constant companion. We didn’t have the room for Ordell to really burn down that energy. So we reluctantly found him another home, where he was going to be fostered until he calmed down.
That was seven years ago. We still visit, and get updates and pictures. But he never did calm down. He still leaps from the center of his cat person’s stairs, to snag the drapes over the entrance, swinging Tarzan-style into the middle of the room, to drop with a thud.
This is the kind of thing we are not able to provide, and he needs it. His new person is much better situated to give him what he needs.
That’s what love is.
So when Dear Husband brought up getting a kitten again, he said, “I know it was my fault. I sent you after an Ordell and you got an Ordell. So this time… could you pick out a Reverend Jim?”
Those who fondly remember Christopher Lloyd’s performance as the “embodiment of the ’60’s” character on Taxi, Reverend Jim, will immediately recognize the kind of personality I was looking for; mellow, a bit goofy, but with a heart of gold. And RJ not only has those traits, he has something extra.
Reverend Jim, on the television series, was constantly befuddled by the world around him.
Having spent decades in a drug haze, the demands of the 1980’s often gave him a completely flummoxed expression. Which we have seen on RJ’s face many times; when he realizes the food dish is always refilled, when he beheld our fancy litter box, when he jumps onto our chair and we make a lap for him to curl up and get cuddling. Whatever happened to him was bad enough for the police to remove him and hold him as evidence, and then he spent we don’t know how many months in cages, by himself.
When he arrived, we had to teach him how to play.
He has bounced back wonderfully. But I hope he never loses his version of Reverend Jim’s face; that wide eyed look of wonder that these great things are for him; and he never expected it.
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