Background: We bought our cat, Chester, because of a response we got from a Craigslist want ad we put out. Rosanna requested a male orange tabby cat because they are known for their affection and easy-going nature. We got a response from someone saying they just had a litter with a cat fitting our description. We went up and fell in love.
As you can see, I couldn't imagine saying no to that kind of happiness in my wife! So we took him back home at the start of July. It always puzzled me that Chester was pretty much content to do his own thing and wasn't the most affectionate cat I'd ever come across. I figured he just needed to have some certain biological symbols of aggression removed and he'd mellow out.
We finally got around to the action steps a few weeks ago. He was getting to be about 8 months old by this point, and we figured it was past time to follow Bob Barker's advice and help control the pet population by having our pet spayed or neutered.
So Rosanna found a great clinic that would do the neuter for about $60. Score. Spaying was twice as much, and boy were we glad we had a boy!
Enter today.
We take Chester, complaining with agonizing meows the whole way, to the clinic. The vet took him into a room to examine him, and we started filling out paperwork. She came out with him and asked us, rather abruptly, "Where did you get this cat?" We explained his history briefly, and she said, "We can't neuter this cat; I can't find anything to remove. She needs to be spayed."
She?!?!
That's right. Turns out, even after we did some research on how to tell the difference between boy cats and girl cats, our research failed us and we have, beyond all doubt, a female cat on our hands.
She's currently in recovery. But even though she's had a bad day, we're probably in bigger shock over what has just happened.
It's hilarious, and we see no reason to be angry. I suppose we could have it out with the people we bought her from, but we'll send them a belated Christmas card celebrating the name change modification we decide on. We do love her, it's just about the most bizarre thing in the world to me to use feminine personal pronouns when talking about her. It's like the boy version died and we have a slightly different cat. She's the same, but she's not.
See that? That's weird. I feel odd typing girl pronouns.
Well, now the main question is: what do we do with her name? She responds to Chester, so we don't want to change it. We thought about "Chester Sue," as a nod to Johnny Cash's song about a boy with an identity crisis revolving his feminine name. Not to mention, this will always be a great story in the future. We've also considered Chelsea, since it's kind of close to Chester. Chess is on the list, too (since we call him - err, her that a lot), or Chessie.
But dang it. I always loved calling her "Chesterton." It was just so much fun to say. As well as "Little Guy!" And "Buddy."
Well, shoot. Any suggestions are welcomed. :o) Meanwhile, she seems to be doing fine and has no confusion as to who she is.
