NAME THAT DOG

My name is Luna, and I'm shiny

      When I brought the puppy home, knowing this time it was for keeps, the next task was to discover her name.   

        Finding an animal’s name is tricky, but crucial. Humans mediate experience with language, so our capacity to name anything - our fears, our needs, our joys - helps establish the reality we live with. That’s true of the animals we share our lives with as well.  I learned this from my son, Matthew, when he was seven years old and we got our first cat.  

    I was four years divorced from his father and in graduate school at the time, living in a big apartment with two other grad students, who loved Matthew and were amenable to a cat, so off we went to the shelter to pick one out.  My oldest sister, Marita, also wanted a kitten for her four year old daughter, so she came with.  And that’s where the trouble started.  

   I took Matthew in the rooms where cats and kittens were clustered in crates and we looked them over as my sister and her daughter checked out their own possible picks.  Matthew honed in a group of seven tabbies who were tumbling around in their crate.  One of them pushed its way to the front and meowed relentlessly, waving tiny paws at him.

   “That one,”  he said.   

   “Seems a little high energy,” I noted.

    “That one,” he repeated.  

Still Luna, after all these years

    Okay then. I went up front to take care of the paperwork while Matthew stood guard over his kitten.  I stopped to let my sister know, and learned she’d been told she couldn’t get a kitten because her daughter was too young.  She was generous in defeat, so she stuffed some money in my hand for the fees, knowing what it’s like to be an underpaid grad student teaching assistant.  

    The woman behind the desk was short and square, with gray hair cropped military style.  When I told her we’d chosen a kitten, she fixed me with a steely eye and said,  “I know what you’re doing.”
    “Yes,”  I said hesitantly.  “I’m adopting a kitten.”

   “No you’re not.  You’re getting one for her.”  She pointed at my sister.  “I saw her give you money for it.”

     I laughed and explained about being a grad student and everything, but she was unconvinced.   She went into a tirade about People Like Me, and how she’d make sure I never got a shelter kitten again and so on. I began to understand that she meant to deprive my son of his kitten, and I bristled.  

    “My son wants a kitten, and I’m not leaving here without one,” I told her.

    She said no. I said yes.  We got loud.  My gestures grew increasingly Italian.  We got louder.  People started looking at us, and I drew them to my cause.  “Do you see what she’s doing?  Do you see?” I shouted at them, at her.   

     My son heard the noise and suddenly appeared in the room, took one look at the scene, and burst into tears.  

    After that, I got really Italian, waving my arms and shouting  “Look what she’s doing to my son!”

    While I kept shouting, the woman picked up the phone and made a call.  I thought she was getting the police, and I was ready for them, but as it turned out, she was calling the Board President.  She spoke briefly, tersely, then shoved the phone in my direction.

    “Board President,” she said.  “Wants to talk to you.”  

     I explained the situation to him, and he came back with soothing, presidential noises about how they had to be very careful, they’d had problems in the past, and they couldn’t afford bad publicity. 

   “You want bad publicity?”  I spit back.  “I’m a writer.”

    He was quiet for a moment, then asked to speak to the steely eyed woman again.

    She listened for a while.  When she hung up, she didn’t speak.  Looking grim, she just gave me the paperwork to fill out.   

    I was magnanimous in victory.  Not once did I say Nyah Nyah.  Not even when we left with the kitten.

     On the way home in the car Matthew was recovering quickly as he played with his new friend.

   “Well,”  I said.  “After all that, maybe we should name this cat Trouble.”

    He looked at me with all the profound wisdom of his age.  “Oh, no, Mommy,”  he said.  “If we name her that, she’ll always see herself that way.”

    Naming creates the parameters of the reality we see for ourselves, and impose on others. Matthew told me we’d call this kitten Frisky, because she was all that.  

    But as cats will, a few weeks later she revealed another name, the one about how she saw herself.  At that time, a friend who was staying over with us left in the middle of the night.  She put a note on the kitchen table saying she couldn’t sleep because Frisky wouldn’t stop dancing on her face.  

    “Did you know,”  she wrote,  “in the middle of the night your Frisky kitty turns into The Psychokitty?”

     She became Frisky the Psychokitty, shortened to Psychokitty and sometimes to Psycho.  And always saw herself that way. 

      Naming the puppy turned out to be easier.  She was shiny black, a night sky dog, and she’d already taught me a mystery or two.  I told Steve, “Her name is Luna.  That’ll be nice to say when I’m training her.”

    “You’re training her?” he asked.

    “You bet,” I said.  “She’s my dog now.  And I’m her human.”

     And training, oh fine people, is what comes next.

   You can find out about my odd adventures with an Eagle named Mitch in my nonfiction book,  Saving Eagle Mitch, available at SUNY Press and on Amazon.  And here’s some food that’s all about the name.  

      

CHEPAITIS ON RYE

People often struggle to say my last name, though really it’s easy.  It rhymes with arthritis, and hepatitis and most inflammatory diseases.  However, someone suggested that I should name a sandwich after myself, to get everyone used to it.  So here it is.  This is for one sandwich.  If you’re making more, you do the math.  

2 slices rye bread 

5 or 6 slices of thinly sliced ham  from the deli

What's in this name?

2 bread-sized slices smoked gouda 

About half a tart apple,  peeled and sliced thin. 

4 thin slices off an onion

Some butter

Mayo and Horseradish, or a nice cranberry honey mustard, as you choose

Put a little butter in a hot skillet and when it’s frothy add the ham.  Let it get just nicely browned a little, then remove it to a plate.  Put the onion and sliced apple into the butter and let it get a tad browned, but not too soft.  Also remove this to a plate.  

Get two slices of rye bread  (I prefer seedless, but you can do as you like.)  and slather your  mayo and horseradish or nice cranberry honey mustard on each slice.  Be generous, now.  No point in holding back.  I never do.  

Place some of the gouda on one slice, and some on the other.  Put the ham, onion and apple on one slice. If you want some crunch, add some slices of uncooked apple because you know the rule:  PLAY WITH YOUR FOOD!

Smash the two slices together.  Add a little more butter to the still hot skillet, and press the sandwich down onto it.  Let it brown nicely on one side, and then the other.

There you go.  A Chepaitis on Rye.