Violet and Pepper

by Andrea Huckstep
(Albion, New York, USA)

It was 2018, and we went through many losses with our pets. In early October (namely on October 1, 2018), our cat Maggie was suffering from a horrible illness, and we didn't want her to suffer much longer, so mom wisely had the vet put her down. A week later, word got out my older sister's beagle Abby died. One day before Thanksgiving in the United States (for those who are Canadian or live outside of North America), we suffered a double whammy regarding our animal losses - our Burmese cat Linkin died. Whatever he died of remains unclear and quite a mystery.

So my mom and I went to go look at some cats and kittens at the animal shelter in Orleans County. While we would look at the cats/kittens, we wouldn't adopt any until my father returned from his "out of state" jobs. My mother had her heart on these two Siamese cats since she had one as a teenager, but both of them were a bonded pair and were "on hold" for their "forever home".

A month later, my dad returns from his job, and one day my mom and I were waiting for my father who was in a Home Depot to do something, and my mom made an exciting announcement: she adopted two kittens from the animal shelter. It was like Christmas came early for me, and I got one of my Christmas gifts early. Both the kittens were female, and were sister kittens that were black - or at least one of them had some grey speckles on her fur...

So my mom said I would name one of the kittens while my father would name the other. I did a lot of brainstorming, and then I had thought back to the summer of 2018... on Father's Day of that year, me and my parents headed to the Drive-In to see The Incredibles II, and in the Incredibles and its sequel, the Parr Family has a teenage daughter (their oldest daughter) named Violet, who can become invisible (The Incredibles have superpowers). Since 2018 was the year of Incredibles II, I decided that one of the kittens would be named Violet. Since her sister had some gray speckles in her fur (which has long disappeared), my father named her Pepper since she looked like a salt and pepper shaker.

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