The Kitties

The striped grey and black cat curled up on "her" blanket on the top of the sofa is Melon, our American Short Hair and the senpai cat in the house. Her name started out as "Mary" because I thought it would be fun to have an inside pun going on her name. No one else has ever thought this was clever but here is the idea: American short hair pronounced in Japanese is: Ah-meh-ree-etc. etc. so: Meh-ree, Mary? Get it? It's okay, don't pretend if you don't. I've already faced the truth that my attempt at punning failed. Anyway, DD#1 (dear daughter #1) Miss 8, started off calling the cat "Mary" about 20% of the time and "Baron" (which was our Obachyan's /Japanese Grandma's cat's name at the time) 20% of the time and then the other 60% of the time she was calling her "Melon". So Melon is the name senpai/senior cat goes by. I tell people it is because she is stripy like a Water Melon. Get it? They look at me with pity.

The grey cat kicking back on the futons is the first and youngest of our kitties. She is kouhai/underling to Melon's senpai status but she kicks Melon's butt on a daily basis regardless. They have never and will never like one another. Melon spent the first two weeks hissing at her kouhai and that was when her kouhai was only the size of a tennis ball! Grey cat was rescued from a large group of shyogakko and youchien kids at our mansion in Osaka. But she's a dead ringer for a Russian Blue. She was only the size of the palm of my hand when she came to live with us. We named her, "Happy" because she was!