We Heart Cats

Can cats change personality? Try making a cross-country move and see what happens.

I originally found my orange, long-haired, 14-pound feline in a Chicago shelter. Apparently someone had left him in a carrier behind the shelter, and he was a bit battered. This cat was shy but sweet — good enough for me. My husband really didn’t expect me to go to a shelter and return home empty handed, so I grabbed this lonely kitty. Because he was a little roughed up but lovable, he had been deemed Ozzy by the shelter folks.

Once I got him home, our other cat — a people-friendly, 20-pound woolly mammoth named Benway — was outraged and proceeded to hiss. Ozzy immediately scrambled under a couch. My husband and I put them in separate rooms for a while, as suggested by the shelter, to let them get used to the new situation. And after about two months, they tolerated one another. But Ozzy would not make a noise — it was almost strange.

Not thinking Ozzy was a good name for our quiet kitty — it reminded us too much of Ozzy Osbourne — we re-named him Silent Bob after a character in the Kevin Smith movie “Clerks.” Actually, Kevin Smith played Silent Bob, the goofy, non-verbal sidekick to loud cornball Jay.

Silent Bob was a sweet but mute kitty for a couple of years. Then I was offered a job in California. So we packed up our stuff and drove our two cats from Chicago to Northern California in about three days. We kept the litter box in our car’s back seat. Benway, the formerly dominant cat, stayed glued to the car floor and looked terrified the entire trip. Silent Bob, on the other hand, roamed from seat to seat, looking out the windows. It seemed he understood we were going somewhere — leaving the old place where Benway was king of the domain.

When we finally introduced the cats to our first new home in California, Silent Bob thoroughly sniffed it out, and camped out for hours to enjoy the view of the outside via sliding-glass door. It was then, after two years, that we noticed his first “mew.” His mews grew into loud meows — especially when he wanted to go out onto the enclosed porch. In Chicago he was scared and ran when someone opened the back door. He also started jumping into our laps, something he certainly wasn’t aggressive enough to try in the past. We also noticed Silent Bob becoming more playful with Benway, and actually acting as instigator — hiding behind a door until Benway walked by, then pouncing.

So my husband and I, amazed at this new verbal quality and assertiveness, dropped the Silent from his name. He is now just Bob. And apparently, a West Coast kind of cat.

-Jill