Oh, Ghost. She’s lovely. She’s perfect. I adore her.

Her name is Penny Electra, and she’s the new love of my life. She is a “Torbie” (tabby x tortoiseshell), with the tabby “M” on her forehead along with a beautiful copper meteor streak. Her beautiful tabby stripes are gray and light gray and copper. She has two calico toe beans on her front left foot, and her nose is half pink and half dark gray. Not a spot of white on her except under the chin. I can’t get enough of her. I drink her in.

T.S. Eliot, in his poem The Naming of Cats, taught the world that cats have three names: the familiar, the particular, and the secretive. The familiar one is their everyday name. They’ll tell you this one for free if you are worthy and know how to listen. The particular name is more formal, for use in mixed (and hopefully polite) company.

The secretive name is the one only the cat knows. It is their true name, and is shared only with other cats while walking The Wild Roads.

If you don’t know about The Wild Roads, read Gabriel King’s fabulous books The Wild Road and The Golden Cat, and you will learn everything you need to know.

In any case, I’d thought of her formal name before I even picked her up. In keeping with my fascination with all things OZ (as in Wizard of OZ, the fourteen original books, not the movies), I named her Electra, after the beautiful maiden who is the keeper of electric light for the world. Daylight and Starlight are a little envious of her, because she outshines them when they both go to bed.

When I met her, finally, I listened very intently for a few days, and she told me in no uncertain terms that her familiar name is Penny, and that I am allowed to call her by that name. She added that she approves of Electra as her formal name, and expects to be introduced to visitors as such.

So, welcome, Penny Electra. Welcome to the world and welcome to me. Welcome to Eden and welcome to our apartment. Welcome to our tiny girl gang. Welcome to our family.

This little girl has already started her jaunts into The Wild Roads, and I am grateful that she is surrounded by her tribe. She is brave and bold, and they are lucky to have this warrior princess among their ranks. She is playful, and funny, and very, very good at pouncing. Her pounces are fierce and determined, and her reverse pounces (when the thing she pounced at responds) are things of legend. I am so proud of her.

She is so good at pouncing, in fact, that I texted my ex this morning “She’s so good at,;,”, when she pounced on my phone and sent the text. Little Penny is vivacious and intrepid, and cannot be deterred from sitting on my work computer, sending e-mails and scheduling meetings in Outlook that I get reminders for, and then momentarily panic about because meeting “OBUKN,S” occurred yesterday, and I missed it.

I really miss sharing this time of my new cat’s life with someone else. I am deeply sad that Marcus can’t see her kitten-beauty and her evolution into full cat-ness. He is supportive and sweet in his texts when I send him pictures, and I’m reminded that he saw Mr. Meepers, Winter, and Noodle grow into their full glory, but he won’t see Penny do the same. It hurts my heart. He should be a part of this. Were we terrible at talking about important issues? Yes. Was he emotionally closed off? Yes. But we are really good at a few things, like traveling together and raising our pets.

In any case, after years of living with a middle-aged cat and senior dog, it’s really nice to have a baby around the house again. She’s adjusted so well, so quickly, that I have a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that she’s only been on the planet for about 12 weeks. It’s bananas, as my friend S would say. Baby energy is something else. I’d forgotten how absolutely fabulous it is to see the world anew again through her eyes, to watch her reactions to new toys, new foods, new discoveries in the apartment and outside the windows. She’s an absolute delight.

Whew, I’m a lucky girl, Ghost. Now if we can just get this stupid eye infection that she came home with cleared up, I’ll breathe a sigh of relief.