The Story of Chewie & Nico

Life's been that bit more colourful with the addition of the furry ones. More so now that Abe's not around, the kitties are doing more than their fair share of cheering up the kids (and me).

So let me write a little bit about how they happen to be in our lives.

My 3 kids have some form of allergy or other - AF has eczema, AI has asthma and AH sneezes and breaks out in rashes whenever she's in close contact with furry animals namely cats. Being animal lovers (which kid isnt?), they'd always wanted to have some sort of pet to call their own but because of the severity of their conditions, they had to contend with the occasional petting with the neighbour's cats, guinea pigs, mice or whatever.

Everytime they came to me with their pleas, my answer was always "wait till sya is in secondary school or until mama pencen" and even if they were not expecting anything else from me, they were still disappointed.

When AH hit 13 this year, i had no choice but to let them try it out. But my one condition was, if AH kept breaking up in rashes as before, we were to abort the whole thing and wait till i decided to pension off (which would probably defeat the whole purpose bcoz the kiddos would already be off somewhere anyway).

So, the moment the neighbourhood stray had her litter (she mates with the various persians that my neighbours seem to be having) we took our pick of the cutest & most playful. I wanted just one because it was after all going to be an experimental exercise of sorts, but mak said it was better if we took in a pair.... "boleh dia main2 sama" she said. And because i didnt want a female cat (takut beranak tak berenti) we took our time in choosing our 2 kitties.

To the best of our limited ability, we finally chose what looked like 2 male kitties (and of course at 3 months identifying their gender was not an easy thing to do lol). But during the ensuing frenzy of naming the furry ones, we reversed our opinion and agreed that probably one of them was a female after all. After much deliberation (the kids were just short of tearing each other's hair off lol), we finally named the greyish one nico (short for nicholas) and the brownish one megu (short for megumi-chan).

But when we hauled them to the vet (for fleas, kurap and whatever - they were pretty dirty strays), we were told that both were probably male but they were still too small to know for sure. So holding on to the fact that the kitties deserved a proper name at least, again we had another brainstorming session and megu became chewbaca. And much to our delight, as they slowly got used to us, we also noticed that AI's asthma was under control and AH was just sneezing occasionally.

As the kitties grew, we had another reversal of opinion.... chewie's genitals were getting more and more prominent and there was no doubting his gender but nico was starting to look more like a female with each passing day. we couldn't see anything resembling the familiar 'balls/nuts/scrotum' whatever!!!!! So we were faced with the same dilemma yet again, what on earth were we going call 'her' now? In the end we decided to keep it nico but short for nicotina instead (AF was smoking then thus the connection with nicotene).

So we had the gender thing settled once and for all, and when we brought them over to the Jabatan Haiwan's clinic for their shots, we registered them as such. And its been that way for their following visits - chewie's purging episode and the infected boil.

But guess what happended when we went over yesterday for their 2nd flu shot??? hehehe.... turned out nico actually is a male, just like we initially suspected way back when. And how did that come about you might say?

We've all been curious as to why nico's been practising these 'male mating' moves with chewy (vice versa) when he's supposed to be a female and why he's been caught by mak a couple of times peeing upright like a tom cat. was there such a thing as a 'tomboy' female feline, we wondered? The question remain unanswered until one day the kiddos (AI & AH) came to me with the idea that nico could just be '2 alam' i.e. both male & female at the same time. apparently they had found what looked like half a scrotum i.e. just 1 ball (they must've poked and prodded poor old nico to no end lol). so we highlighted the fact to the vet, and he confirmed the fact that nico was definitely a male and did have only 1 ball to his name. a little uncommon but not all that unusual it seems.

So nico is now officially nicholei (we feel its much more macho sounding than plain old nicholas and he does need all the help he can get with just 1 ball) and the proud owners of 2 male cats. We're done with the gender issue and the renaming lol.

Because, no matter what we already love them both to bits :)

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** Running Log **

Its my 1st day at work after a long Raya break, and since i dont have any kiddos to drop off, squeezing in a morning run was easy. But of course i couldnt afford any dilly dallying and it was a straight, no nonsense lap round the tasik.

1 lap= about 4 km= 25 mins (yee haa... a fast one for me).