Something disturbing (to me) and funny (to everyone else) happened while we were in CA that I forgot to write about. Before my dad joined us all in CA, he was here finishing up his three summer-term classes for the week. During that time he took my parents' cat, Ginger (remember this story?) to the vet. My mom is always singing praises to the "mighty huntress" that is Ginger. She chases and kills mice, birds, and squirrels. And, as often happens, she had gotten in a skiff with another feline and developed a nasty abscess.
Then this conversation (recreated in part by my dad but mostly by my imagination) happened.
Dad: Hi, I'm calling to see how my cat, Ginger, is doing.
Vet: I've drained the abscess and stitched it all up. He's doing just great. You can pick him up any time.
Dad: Oh, that's great. I'll be right . . . did you say "he"?
Vet: Um, yeah.
Dad: Ginger is a boy?
Vet: That's right, sir. He's hasn't got all of his boy parts anymore, but he's definitely a male cat.
I admit that a vet probably wouldn't use the term "boy parts," but I can't bring myself to write a more technical term, not because I'm squeamish about male anatomy but because I'm squeamish about sex changes. Seven years of thinking of Ginger as a woman only to find out she's--he's--not just weirds me out. But then I have a phobia of things morphing into other things or seeming other than they are, which explains why the old Shaggy Dog movie gave me nightmares as a kid. It also explains why I was fated to marry someone obsessed with werewolves.
Who's to blame for this gender confusion? We're not sure, but Diana claims to have declared Ginger woman first and I guess we all believed her. And we probably shouldn't have because this isn't the first time one of our family pets has been forced to masquerade as a member of the opposite sex. When I was in elementary school, my second-grade teacher requested the services of Sneaker, our "male" guinea pig, to keep company with the class's female pet. (A second-grade teacher wanting to breed guinea pigs in a classroom now strikes me as rather odd, but it was Berkeley.) I was devastated, and rather surprised (after all, this was Berkeley), to find that the two wouldn't mate. In an attempt to solidify her femininity, my mom placed bows in Sneaker's hair periodically for years to come. They didn't help my damaged psyche.But while Sneaker was a fairly gender-neutral name, Ginger (short for "Gingervere") is not. So now we are left with a problem--what to call a now-male-to-us cat that she (he!) will recognize and we'll remember after 7 years of the name Ginger. "Gingo the male cat" is the current placeholder. Are there others we're overlooking?
10 comments:
You couldn't tell that he was a boy, I mean he has a mustache!
That is really weird, that would really bug me. I would just deny the whole thing ever happened.
You could shorten it to Gin, like the drink :)
Gin is a juniper berry-flavored grain spirit . The word is an English shortening of Genever, the Dutch word for juniper.
Denial was my number one strategy too, but it was vetoed by my family.
That was really quite funny. I loved the guinea pig story too...esp. the fact that your mom would put bows on her later.
I've always thought of Ginger as a male name, actually, because my sister named her horse Ginger...I agree that Gin might be a nice alternative. Ginko? I don't know.
You could try Binger. It's fairly neutral and if I remember correctly, he/she somewhat reflects the name in physical appearance. I'm sure it wouldn't notice the difference.
Oh man that is too funny! I always thought Ginger was a little too aggressive to be a she. It all makes sense now.
How funny. You have the best writing skills. I was laughing out loud while reading this. How's work going? I'm sad that I never got to see you.
I hate this post. It freaks me out. Deny. Deny. Deny.
Deny hummm I think I might just spend the rest of Gin's life calling him kitty... but now that's not going to well either. You certainly have me stumped.
Since people might be wondering how we could have possibly mistaken a male cat for a female, I need to inform you that Ginger came into our lives relatively late in his/her life as a stray (s/he was probably a year old, which is what, 8 in cat years), and had already decided to undergo a *partial* sex-change operation (apparently an unsuccessful one).
Also, Ginger is a good boy's name too; don't think of Gilligan's island, think of the drummer from Cream, the great Ginger Baker.
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