Magnum, P.I.

The ASPCA has some method of identifying the personalities of cats by observing their behavior.  The idea is that these "feline-alities" can be used to match potential cat owners to the kind of pet they are looking for.

Feline-ality: Studious

After filling out a brief questionnaire, we were told that we were looking for:

Sidekick
Like all sidekicks, I'm just plain good company. I like attention, and I also like my solitude. I don't go looking for trouble, but I'm no scaredy-cat, either. If you are looking for a steady companion to travel with you on the road of life, look no further.


We saw a couple of sidekick cats, but they all seemed shy and even aloof...At first we thought it was that they didn't like us.  But when Finn came up to us and was appearing to enjoy interacting with us, the volunteer who was helping us read the following from his file:

Private Investigator
I'm working undercover to keep an eye on you and your household. You may not even know you're under surveillance. I can vanish into thin air if anyone or anything interferes with my investigation. If you need a cat who knows how to stay out of trouble and will always keep your secrets, I just might take your case.

The volunteer had seemed to imply that sidekicks were the kinds of animals who would follow us around, wanting to play and providing companionship, whereas the private investigators wanted to be on their own and would always be watching you, but from a distance.

After two days with Finn, we're pretty sure that his P.I. I.D. was totally bogus.  He is constantly following us from room to room, lying near us, and meowing when we're out of sight.  Don't get me wrong, he's no lap cat.  But he is much more of a companion that we would have expected had we taken the quiz results seriously.

That being said, last night he had a private investigator moment:

Where's Waldo?

What's in a name?

So how did we get from Marcus to Finn?

We knew we didn't want Marcus as a name for our cat -- we just didn't like it!

After juggling many potential names inspired by books, TV, history, and simple silliness, we settled on Finn for a bunch of reasons.  See below for some reasons why this name is fitting:

-Finn is Gaelic for "fair," and he does have a beautiful sandy color that is rare
-Speaking of his sandy color, we tried to think of a beachy name for Finn, and we couldn't help but smile when we realized that oceans are filled with fish and that fish have fins...har har
-Many have declared that it is impossible to summarize James Joyce's novel, Finnegans Wake, and we find our kitty just as enigmatic and confusing as the book!
-Odafin 'Fin' Tutuola is a detective played by Ice-T on the hit series (and a Dean & Alex favorite) Law & Order: SVU
-As a budding neurologist, one of Alex's favorite famous case studies is Phineas Gage

Meet Finn

Finn is a darling cat we have adopted from the ASPCA shelter in New York City (though his name at the shelter was Marcus).  We literally saw every cat available, and played with seven before we decided on Finn...Some were extremely shy, others begged for us to take them home (see: Flakes, an adorable cat except she was a little older than we were looking for).  When we walked into Finn's "quiet" social room, he was asleep with his head at a funny angle, but he noticed Dean and decided to come over and see us.  Finn immediately responded to Dean petting his head, and he appeared calm and thoughtful.  We decided to take him home, filled out the appropriate paperwork, and bought some last-minute supplies for our apartment!

We took a cab from the Upper East Side to Washington Heights.  The cab driver was more than a little surprised when we brought a meowing cardboard crate into the back seat of the vehicle, but he did his best to speed all the way home so that Finn would stop crying as soon as possible.

Once home, we opened the crate and let him out!

This blog will hopefully consist of daily posts with some pictures of Finn along with some factoids and metaphorical "snapshots" of our cutie.  Comments welcome!