I had just turned six when my grandparents gifted me with an adorable 6-week old kitten. I can only imagine my expression as the answer to a year's worth of prayers was lifted from my grandmother's handbag. I know that my parents faces were ashen and their voices tight and abnormally high pitched as they expressed words of delight to absolutely no one who was convinced.

We weren't even listening, really, my grandparents, my brother and I. We were busy cooing and fawning over the tiny fur baby. There were saucers of milk to fetch and balls of yarn to send pinballing around the living room.

And there had to be a name.

I gave it some thought and after a day decided upon Butterscotch because the kitten had one butterscotch paw. My father had a particular distaste for butterscotch and suggested Isis. I liked that name because I was a fan of the Saturday morning show about a girl superhero by the same name. That's how a 6-week old farm kitten ended up with the rather lofty and imperious name of Isis.

If you name a kitten after an Egyptian fertility goddess and then don't bother to have her spayed do you really have any right to be angry when the cat runs off for three days and then comes home pregnant? Probably not. But anger isn't based in logic.

Isis did not live a long and happy life, I'm sorry to say. She was the bane of my parents' existence during her short time on Earth; the victim of family politics and unhappy childhoods left unresolved. She was at times the only friend I had in the world and at times the catalyst (I know) for interactions that left indelible scars on my psyche. Her impact on me was such that, in the end, she had more than grown into her name.

Just before turning 21, I moved out of my parents home (again) and into an apartment with a woman whom I had only recently met at work. Her boyfriend was allergic to cats and even though he lived far away and never visited the apartment, cats were out of the question. I really wanted a cat but I was young and nervous about being on my own and Roommate was older and wise and made me feel safer. Not having a cat was a small price to pay for the comfort she provided.

Her relationship was tumultuous on its best day and the break-ups were frequent and loud (at least on her end) and never stuck for long. But I knew it was finally over on the evening when she emerged from her room with her arms crossed over her chest in a protective posture and said, "You can get a cat now."

I didn't have a name in mind when I brought the orange and white tabby back to the apartment. Roommate and I watched this kitten leave the comfort of my lap to explore the small space with extreme caution only to quickly return to me and eventually fall into a peaceful sleep. I thought of quiet, sweet names. Tabitha, like the kitten from Beatrix Potter, was the front-runner.

Later that evening, Roommate and I sat in the living room watching television while Kitten wandered about the apartment. Suddenly a flash of orange streaked by. Again the other way. Back again. Again. Again. And then this time she took a mighty leap into air and landed so that she was hugging a doorframe in a such a way that one paw was on the wall of the living room and the other paw on the wall of my bedroom. There she clung for the briefest second before her tiny body slid all the way down the doorframe and then she was off again.

"That cat is crazy," Roommate said.

I named her on the spot. Zelda. After the wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald, as I'm sure most of you already guessed.

Zelda was with me through three years of 60-hour work weeks combined with 12-credit hour semesters. So was Roommate. Both of them provided me with enormous comfort and support and encouragement albeit in entirely different ways. Zelda definitely outgrew her name, settling into a calm and quiet cathood after her reckless youth.

Shortly after we married, my husband and I adopted two kittens. We named one Tess, after the Thomas Hardy character. The other we called Remy after a favorite brand of cognac. It was a time in our lives when we had the luxury of doing a lot of reading. And drinking.

Tess the cat died suddenly at a young age from an unknown malady. That combined with the rather violent end met by the pair of mourning doves that lived in my pergola whom I named Tristan and Isolde led to my currently held belief that it is smug at best to name living things after tragic literary figures. As it stands right now, I'm 2 birds and 2 cats to the bad with Zelda somehow escaping a fiery death.

Remy, by the way, continues to get better with age.