Meet Sofía and Claire

The girls moved in with us at the start of the school year this year. As you can see they've settled in nicely.



Originally I had intended to let my students name them. We did in fact hold a contest to choose new names. After much debate (in Spanish of course... well almost) they chose Nevaeh (Ni-vay-ah) which is heaven spelled backward, and Diamond, because Claire has an orange spot on her forehead. Shortly after the contest I talked to my friend Amanda. During high school her best friend and she had French names in their French class: Sophie and Claire. So we kept the names they had when we found them at the Humane Shleter.



Sofía (on top) is 2 years old. She had never lived with other cats, so she was quite leery of letting Claire get close. She spent most of the first month at home on top of the refridgerator. She would sleep there all day, but was by no means shy. When anyone would walk in the room she would go to the edge of the fride to get their attention. She enjoyed being petted so much that she would lose all sense of space and just fall right off the edge, purring all the way to the floor. She is now quite comfortable at home, and rarely jumps back up to her perch on the fridge. She is so comfortable in fact, that she will fall asleep almost anywhere. Once asleep it is sometimes difficult to rouse her. She snores, she squeaks, and she twitches without a clue as to what is going on around her.



Claire is 4 years old. She is a little smaller. She doesn't have Sofía's pretty coloring or pretty blue eyes. With the strange orange spot right on top of her head we sometimes refer to her as "the ugly one." She has a few bad habits that have helped her adopt a few other nicknames. First, she has a talent for swinging her tail just beyond the limits of the litter box. You can imagine the rest. Her great joy in life is drinking from the faucet. She will sprint from any place in the house the second she hears the water running. The habit unfortunately has developed into a serious drinking problem. She enjoys the running water so much that she does not know when to stop. She'll drink her fill, jump down from the sink, and promptly vomit on the floor. We've grown accustomed to her weak stomach. She is allowed to drink from the faucet on rare ocassions only, and we quickly cut her off.

They've been a lot of fun. We keep their hair cleaned up as much as we can, and we keep allergy medicine on hand in case our guests have problems.