I'm supposed to be painting

[Auspicious]

And that's the official chicken burying shovel right behind them.

That's how I keep 'em in line.

Hmm. So, our friends have two cats named Partial and Shovel. Shovel got hs name thus: When the wife was younger and still lived with her parents, the previous cat died. The family was grief-stricken. They decided to bury the cat in the empty lot across the road from their house. They buried the cat, tossed the shovel back in their own yard, and walked across to say a few words over the cat's grave. As they're standing there gathered around crying, a pickup truck pulls up in front of their yard, a guy gets out and puts their shovel in the back of his truck, and then gets in and drives away, like it was all business as usual. They all just stood there, teary and dumbfounded, thinking WTF, did that guy just steal our shovel right in front of us during our cat funeral??

In retrospect they decided it was so random and funny that when my friend got her next cat she named him Shovel in honor of that bizarre little happening. [/i]

[Meenah]

Julie that is one of the funniest stories I have heard in a long time!!!
Luanne

[SueC]

What a crazy story! Need we ask how "Partial" got his name???

I was thinking the same thing, Sue!

[Auspicious]

Partial got his name because another mutual friend of ours used to work at some kind of residential facility for mentally retarded adults. There was one resident, Bob (or something), whose hobby/interest/passion was all things dental. Sort of the way some people pride themselves on their arcane knowledge of baseball or vintage cars, Bob loved dentistry. So the facility acquired a cat somewhere along the way and Bob was put in charge of choosing the cat's name. He came up with Partial, meaning, in this case, like a partial denture. Bob thought partials were cool. And that was the cat's name.

My friend, who obviously likes the nontraditional cat-naming methods, thought that Bob had chosen creatively and well, and liked that story so much she named her next cat Partial after the facility's cat.