VERRAZANO

I have never viewed myself as one of those flighty women who would put their babies on top of the car and take off; last week I realized it's probably a good thing I never had a baby! It was raining and I was hurriedly putting things in my car to go to work at our group's Rummage Sale. I placed a tote on top of the car; it was filled with stickers, pens, notebook, tape, scissors and a silver bowl which I had taken home to polish. When I arrived at the sale I realized that the tote wasn't in the back seat of my car and had obviously fallen off somewhere between my house and the Rummage Sale location. Very embarrassed, I called my husband and asked him to trace my route to look for it. He said he saw no evidence along the way. When I confessed my story to my Rummage Sale co-workers, I became the object of jibes the remainder of the day! If something could not be readily located, invariably one would say, "It's probably in the tote!"

This happened the day after a person was sighted in New York tossing a Russian Blue kitten out the window on the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. Fortunately, the kitten was rescued and was promptly named "Verrazano".

I asked if anyone had seen the story about the kitten and Carla said, "I heard Verrazano was in the tote!"

Years ago, Amanda, a young woman who worked for me, called, crying, and told me there was a kitten in her dumpster. She said she could hear it mewing, but she couldn't get into the dumpster and asked if I could help. I immediately dispatched the knight-in-shining-armor Gerald and he took a ladder to her apartment and got in the dumpster and rescued the kitten. Thus "Rumpke" was a part of our lives! Les said, "Good thing it wasn't a Waste Management dumpster!"

Two years ago, a neighbor from down the street called and asked if we were the folks who had cats. Immediately self-defensive and thinking she probably thought that we were the "crazy cat people on the corner", I timidly answered that we had cats. She told me that she and her daughter had been walking and they saw a kitten trapped in a storm drain and asked for our help. Gerald went, leaned over and called, "Here, kitty, kitty," and the kitten jumped out of the drain. Thus we've had "Stormy" in our lives! Les said, "Good thing it wasn't in the sewer or it would've been named Ed Norton."

For more cat-naming items, go to SASHA FIERCE in my blog archives!

To see the "Verrazano" news article, click here.