Day 3: Jubjub

Since I've shared a bit about myself and my husband, I'll spend today on the third member of our little clan: the cat. I guess the best starting point is how he got his name. It is a tad bit unusual, I'll give you that. And most people eventually get around to asking us how we came up with it. It's not a very interesting story but here's how we named our cat.

After I graduated from Tech, I was teaching in Sunray and living by myself for the first time, away from Paul and my friends. Everyone kept saying I should get some type of pet so I'd have something there to greet me when I got home each afternoon. Paul and I discussed getting a cat that would be "ours" but would live with me. We didn't have a cat yet but were talking about what to name one when we got it. Paul kept suggesting things along the line of Warhammer and Stormbringer. I just couldn't imagine naming my cat something so overwhelmingly sci-fi nerdy. My top choices were Dexter or Alice, neither of which Paul liked because he thought they were just plain nerdy.

Out of the blue, Paul suggested the name Jubjub, the iguana from The Simpsons. It only appears in a couple of episodes--one with Duff Gardens (Paul's favorite) and one where Selma marries Troy McClure. It was the latter episode I saw, which ends with Selma walking off into the sunset with Jubjub the Iguana and says "Come on Jubjub. Let's go home." I swear I had major PMS because that made me cry so I agreed to name the cat Jubjub. Not knowing how to spell it, we opted to go with no hyphen, which is how it is spelled in the poem Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll (which is where I will occasionally credit the cat's name even though it had nothing to do with it--it sounds better in some crowds). No matter; no one spells it correctly. Kind of like my name.

A week or so after deciding on a cat name, my then-sister-in-law called to ask if I'd like a kitten. Her sister had found one and ex-SIL couldn't keep it since she already had a couple of pets and 2-year-old twins. So I picked up this sad little kitten, barely a month old, and loved him and hugged him and squeezed him and called him Jubjub. It's been over 10 years and I have to say that everyone was absolutely right. I definitely needed something warm and fuzzy to go home to every day.

Jubjub's one trick--he'll stand up on his back feet so you can pick him up and stretch him after you've been out. Some days, all we have to do is only be gone long enough to pick up the mail and he's waiting for a stretch. We're not sure how he figured out to do this, or what I did to train him to do it, but it's awfully sweet. One of my favorite pictures of Jub. This is from the apartment I lived in when I first moved to ABQ. That's a roadrunner on the balcony railing. Jub didn't know what to do with a bird of that size.
We thought we'd be clever and leash-train the cat. He'd go limp every time we put it on him, as if the mere presence of the leash was completely paralizing.
Paul's granddad Owen doesn't quite understand what our cat's name actually is. He's always asking us "How is Jojo doing?" We don't correct him. We simply reply "Jojo's doing good. Real good." Jojo's even better when there are bags and boxes around for him. No bag or box, no matter how big or small, is safe from the girth of Jojo. He loves them all. He gets very offended and will limp away if you have to move him.Someone (I believe it was my dad) once commented on our pet name choice: Stupid name for a stupid cat. That pretty much sums him up. I can't argue--Jub is cranky and simple. Jub's current BFF is the humidifier in our bedroom. He's always lying beside it, even when it's not on. Jubjub {hearts} The Humidifier.

And I {heart} both of these guys.