Samantha?

My cat Pepper and I are currently feuding. Well, she is. I recently bought a “cheeper” cat litter 🤷🏻‍♀️

I’ve had two other cats. I’ve also had several dogs through relationships but only one was mine. I miss them all.

Pepper came to me a mystery. A woman I barely knew had her and needed to let her go. Pepper’s story is that she was a “pandemic pet.” About six months later, the family got a “pandemic dog” too. One with a rather high “prey drive,” apparently.

Pepper lived essentially under the master bed and couch for about two years, before this woman decided Pepper needed a better life and asked if I’d be willing to take her in.

Pepper spent the first month with me under my couch. Despite my best efforts to coax her, she wouldn’t budge as long as I was awake.

Over the next few years we’ve evolved from “roommates” to friends to where I am now—I couldn’t let her go if I had too. She’s my girl. And she will out live me.

Having said that, she’s a real bitch sometimes. I mean that in the best sense. She is a “Tortoiseshell,” or the cuter “Tortie.”

For those unfamiliar, and to be fact checked by those more familiar than I, as I understand it, my Pepper’s American Shorthair line goes: black cats and white cats, then tuxedo, then Calico (which are all female for the most part) and/or Torties (which are also all females). Despite this, as the Bisexual saying goes, “in the dark, all cats really are grey.”

They also come with “Tortitude,” and it’s not only real, it’s freaking fierce. There is a reason I’m sure Edgar Allen Poe only owned Torties. Probably because their love and companionship comes with a “darkness.” To “stare into the abyss” of a Tortie is to know it’s “staring back.” 😳

Google says they are “independent and demanding, communicating their needs clearly with clear vocalizations.” Oh does she!! She’s the most vocal cat I’ve ever owned 🤣

She exhibits “personality” in each distinctive type of “meow.” She has one to announce her entry into a room. One to announce her dissatisfaction or pleasure at the current state of said room once she enters. One she does when she’s happy and one for when she’s “fed up.” My personal favorite is the kindly, “Psst, your morning alarm is going to go off in like an hour and I just thought you’d like to know” roar.

Finally, there is her special sound for when she’s mad at me. They’re called "baps," according to Google. I call them, “WTFs!!”

Google also says that Torties are a “lucky cat.” I’ve also read that folklore suggests they are “a money cat.” All I know is they really really like habit and consistency. Never alter the routine!! She’s like a “mini-Sheldon” 🤦🏻‍♀️

Wait, actually, Pepper is like having an eighteen pound bitchy dominatrix for a roommate 💅

I love her for it almost as much as I love her in spite of it. She’s also really good at rainy day snuggles ☺️ (she’s in my lap right now ☺️).

I got my first cat, Samantha, when I was nine years old. My father had just been transferred from one base to a new base. An occurrence that as a “military brat,” pretty consistently defined my childhood—moving somewhere new every three years.

However, this would be my first experience “living off post” and going to a non-military school. I started 5th grade in Dayton, Ohio.

By this point, I’d already announced I was “gay” to my old 4th grade class. But this was a new place and a new school. Moreover, I’d also since learned that “liking boys” was actually a sort of a requirement for being gay, and I did not like boys. At all. They didn’t seem to care for me much either 🤷🏻‍♀️

By this point I had yet to see “The World According to Garp” on HBO, so I was still “confused.” That confusion would become evident as soon as school started (but that’s a tale for another time, because this one’s about my name ☺️). I was, back then, still ending each nightly prayer with my silent, “God, please let me wake up a girl.”

Samantha came from my backyard neighbor’s daughter’s cat’s litter. Time spent with that little girl, her backyard above ground pool, her big sister’s water bed, and her big sister’s record collection were together the best summer of my life.

When her cat, a Siamese, gave birth, all her kittens were black-ish but Samantha was the only completely black kitten, and she was mine no matter what.

After successfully lobbying my dog loving parents for a kitten (don’t ask 😂), I brought Samantha home. She quickly accepted my father’s Beagle and vice versa. She slept in my room and she was mine.

Her name came from the TV show “Bewitched.”  I’d give almost anything to be able to wiggle my nose 😂

“After school television” back then consisted of daytime soaps or cartoons like “Scooby-Doo” or the “Bugs Bunny” variety-type programs. We also had PBS shows. But our “third channel” (I know!!) had shows like “The Brady Bunch,” “Gilligan’s Island,” (I have a theory based off “Gilligan’s Island” that completely explains our current political reality but it does require imagining the Gilligan character as “the devil.” No!! I am being serious 🤷🏻‍♀️), and my two favorites, “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and “Bewitched.”

I will say that the core of my style is mostly based off Mary Tyler Moore’s character from the Dick Van Dyke show. I’ve always loved those lines.  I’d say I’ve modeled parts of my personality off of Samantha Stephens from the show “Bewitched.”

In real life, Elizabeth Montgomery was an animal rights activist and fought for gay and lesbian rights along with providing active vocal support for HIV awareness and AIDs. Not a bad role model in real life ☺️

At the risk of tossing out a metaphor that only some may “appreciate,” I am most definitely a “Ginger.” But, I often believe I’m really a “Mary Anne.” The worst “type”

😂 (Weighing in on the old “Ginger vs. Mary Ann debate?” Thank God I’m a free publication, right 🙄)

But I digress. So, here’s the very best part about Samantha. She has lore. And, I shit you’re not, I couldn’t make hers up if I tried ☺️

About a year after she became part of our family, my father had a friend over for dinner. He was apparently “raised on a farm,” or something 🤷🏻‍♀️ Nonetheless, he took a quick look at Samantha during dinner that night and announced that Samantha was “really a Sam.”

I mean, we were kids. And, honestly, I don’t really recall either of us ever “checking.” But, the Vet never mentioned Samantha’s sex that I could recall. Her doctor certainly didn’t object to my name for him.

He was Samantha. Not Sam. But now he was “Sam.” Notably, the Vet never objected to the name Sam 🤷🏻‍♀️

In my heart he was always Samantha. That’s how he entered my world. However, over the next 15-years, Sam would become my world in a vastly different and better way independent of his sex—always my loving companion. So much so that in High School, my best friend’s band would learn the song “Lucifer Sam” by Pink Floyd just to dedicate it to us at shows 🥰

I’ve used the name Samantha as long as I can remember. I’ve named D & D characters after her—still do 😂

It’s been a variation of a login or screen name countless times (some have even had “69s” or such at the ends of them 🤦🏻‍♀️). If I could choose a character’s sex as well as her name in a video game, yep, it was always Samantha.

It’s been the name of the “little girl” that’s walked beside me my entire life. It was her that I used to torture myself with. “I bet Samantha would have won that game.” Or “would have had a better comeback.” She was always “just a bit better than me” despite also being “me.”

She was always pretty and she was alway fit. She got good grades too. A cheerleader. “Popular.”  It was her and her “impression of me” that I used to measure my me in all things; from how I looked and dressed to how I acted. It’s was always her “voice” that both supported me in difficult times (“If I could do it, so can you!!”) and berated me in my failures.

It was always her that I had in mind when I said my nightly prayers.

Hi 👋

I’m Samantha ☺️

Now, if I could just learn to wiggle my nose maybe I could finally be happy 😃

Thank you so much for reading 💕