Visit Archimedes
Archimedes thanks all
My husband and I play a role-playing game called CyberGeneration. This is a CyberPunk spinoff, for those of you familiar with the original. My character's name is Persephone, or Seph for short. Part of the premise of this game is that life is tough. At one particular time in the story of these characters, life was REALLY tough. The characters have all been exposed to a disease, for which the government will kill them if it catches them, so most of the kids can't go home. (For brevity's sake, I will not elaborate on the government conspiracy which is covering up the fact that this disease can't be transmitted between humans.) The main characters have been staying with a couple named Cat and Bunny, and learning a lot, going to school, and missing their parents. In Seph's case, that's her Dad, since her Mom died when she was little, and it's always been just the two of them. So, Bunny is the closest thing to a mother she's ever had, and Bunny just got killed. Cat's in the hospital with a head wound, one of their friends just died in an ugly bike accident, and one of their other friends is in the hospital, minus both legs below the knee. So Seph and her pals Jo-Jo, Scope, Logan, and Coy have had a lousy week.
Which brings us to Archimedes. Seph and her friends decide that it will cheer them up to go to the Humane Society and see the animals, instead of sitting around Cat's huge house all afternoon wondering what will happen to them if he dies. While there, Seph is playing with a sweet tabby kitten with a broken leg when she overhears one of the shelter staff mention that the kitten is going to have to be euthanized soon because no one wants a kitten that isn't perfect.
Seph decides that she'd very much like to have a kitty who isn't perfect and asks to adopt him. The catch is, she's only sixteen. The shelter will only let her adopt the kitty if she can produce a parent or legal guardian, but Seph knows that the kitty's time is running out. She'll have to produce a parent or legal guardian by day after tomorrow, and her legal guardian is in the hospital with half his head blown off, and she's afraid her dad will be immediately remanded to a government death camp if he's seen in her company. Seems pretty grim for kitty, huh?
Well, Logan and Coy not only don't like the idea of a kitty being killed because it's not perfect, they know that Seph breaks stuff when she's upset. Besides, both of them like her. A lot. So they cook up a great plan. They're proud to be a part of this plan. They involve everyone they can find in this plan. They steal a Toys R Us truck from the mall, which Logan drives. Then, they get as many kids as they can find to help them break into the Humane Society and load all the animals onto the truck except for the ones that are waiting for their new families to come and pick them up.
Because of the sheer number of kids Scope has managed to involve in this operation, our little band of delinquents manages to find homes for every single one of the animals. Okay, so they didn't do any follow up to make sure the animals were getting good care, and they ended up taking home about a dozen of the cats and a large hawk that somehow ended up at the shelter, but it's only a story, and the aforementioned house really was huge, and had a three story green house for the hawk to boot.
So now, Seph has a little kitty with a limp which she names, you guessed it, Archimedes. Ultimately, there were a lot of other happy endings for our merry adventurers, but I'll save it until I do a page for the game.
In about November 1997, when Rom and Remus had been running our lives for about two years, Avery decided we really needed a kitten. He then proceeded to try and convince me to take home EVERY little black and brown tabby cat we saw for about a week. I wasn't so sure we needed another kitty. After all, Rom and Remus are pretty great, and when they work together, they can knock me down. With three kitties, we'd be outnumbered. And what if the Boyz didn't like the new kitty? I knew I wouldn't be able to send it back to the shelter, I'm too much of a sucker, but our apartment is very small, and I'd never be able to keep them all apart for ever. Avery answered all my objections with a plaintive look and "If we found Archimedes, you'd get one."
I remained unconvinced until I logged onto the Cat Fancy BB less than two days later. There, I saw a post from a woman named Barbara N saying she was going to kidnap a kitten if she could find it a home. I didn't think much of it and read the post. Here was a black and brown tabby kitten with a bad paw that had been hurt in an accident that was being neglected in a garage somewhere, and the people who were feeding him (I won't say taking care-- they weren't, and they didn't love him, so I won't call him their kitty) wouldn't let her find him a home basically out of spite. Here, in answer to my husband's prophetic words, was Archimedes. But where was he? Barbara N didn't mention where she lived in her post.
I immediately wrote her an e-mail and asked where she lived, telling her the whole story. I said I knew it was silly to love a fictional cat, but I couldn't help it, and where was she, please? The answer to that question laid to rest any doubts I might have had. This was fate. She and her husband and Archimedes were about an hour from my parents-in-law, and I was coming up to take my business to a conference in a week and a half. We made arrangements to meet at a rest stop on the highway, halfway between us.
On the night of our "kitty date," we loaded down the car with a new fluffy blankie, toys, food, water, a cat carrier, brush, litter box, flea shampoo, and everything else we could think of and took off, a little concerned about the fact that we'd realized once we were underway that the rest stop was on the other side of the highway, and we'd have to get off and backtrack in order to get there.
It turned out that this was the least of our problems. There was an accident on the road, and the emergency teams rerouted traffic before we ever reached the rest stop, sending us miles out of our way and dropping us much further than our destination. It was even further before we found an exit where we could get back on the highway in the right direction. By now, we were 40 minutes late and I was frantic. My poor little baby kitty! What if Barbara and her husband gave up on us and went home? What if we passed each other on the road? What if it turned out the rest stop was on the other side after all, and we couldn't get there because of the accident? Avery continued to reassure me that it would be okay. When we finally arrived, we pulled in right next to Rick and Barbara's car.
While we made the swap, Barbara revealed that she and Rick hadn't planned to give up on us for about another hour. Avery grinned at me and said "See dear? I told you it would be okay!" We settled our cold and no doubt confused little kitty into the car, and the rest is history!