The Story of Juneau

After my last entry fooltoworry asked if I worked at an alternative high school. Nope. Believe it or not, everything I write about happens in a plain ol' public high school. Sometimes it amazes me, and I wonder what the alternative high schools are like.

I put a footnote in my last entry that we wound up keeping Dreamer and re-naming her Juneau. Like most things, it wasn't a simple process.

We had Dreamer for awhile. We took her because a friend of mine found her but couldn't keep her, and the Illinois shelters were full. I took her certain that if we couldn't find a friend to take her in, we could at least give her to one of the nicer shelters in the area. Unfortunately we were told that because the cat was abandoned instead of ours she was technically a stray and would be sent to Animal Control instead of to a nice humane society. We weren't crazy about the idea of handing her over to them, so we hung onto her and tried to pass her off onto one of our friends.

We were keeping her in a seperate room away from the other cats and also away from Mike so he wouldn't get too attached. Mike is a softie and would fall in love with her if she spent any time with him. Unfortunately, Dreamer had other ideas. During the night she started somehow opening the door to her room and mingling with the other cats. After a few nights this way it was clear that she enjoyed being out and didn't have any problems with the other cats. I figured that she didn't need to be seperated anymore, but this meant that she was in contact with Mike, and an attachment began to form.

We had a couple of good prospects for homes for Dreamer but they didn't work out. However, we came close enough that Mike got a good idea of what it would feel like to have Dreamer leave. He didn't like it too much. After those few leads dried up he informed me that we should consider Dreamer to be ours semi-permanently, and that we should also give her a new name.

The name was a sticky issue since I knew that once we named her she'd be ours. That's why you never name foster animals or farm animals you intend to eat...a name makes them your pet. We hadn't been calling her Dreamer since we both hated that name. I had begun calling her Daydream Believer after the old Monkees song, and then branched out to refer to her as Sleepy Jean and Homecoming Queen. After she was out and mingling with the others, Mike referred to her as "the new cat," but I deliberately called her "the intern" to emphasize her status as temporary. However, he wanted a new name for her and left me the responsibility to come up with one. I think he thought that I'd be more enthusiastic about the idea if I was the one to name her.

I thought for a long time before settling on Juneau. It was a historical name, which satisfied the history buff in me, but is was also the name of one of Milwaukee's founding fathers, which appealed to the Milwaukeephile in Mike. Once Mike got her a collar and a tag I knew she was ours for keeps.

Recently we got a few offers to take Juneau but Mike wasn't too enthused about them. One was a co-worker who lives in Chicago, but her long hours would keep her from spending too much time with Juneau. Another was my friend Marc who was looking for a cat to replace his girlfriend's cat who recently ran away, but Mike didn't want to give Juneau to someone we wouldn't see regularly. My mom's dog Tess was recently diagnosed with lymphatic cancer and will probably die within the next six or eight weeks, and after that she might want Juneau. Mike is okay with that since we'd be able to see Juneau whenever we visited.

Five cats really is too many, and so we'll give Juneau away when we find the right home. If we find the right home. Someday.