Not To Be Trusted With Knives

Meet Watson & Crick

January 19, 2014 by Beth

Yesterday, I brought home my two little fuzzballs. Formerly known as Simon & Blue, I have renamed them Watson & Crick.

Props to my friend Steven who came up with these names1! For the uninitiated2, James Watson & Francis Crick are the scientists who figured out the double helix structure of DNA3.

When I went to pick up the kitties at their foster home, I was a bit worried that there would be a bit of a fight to get the them into their cat carriers because, to the best of my knowledge, cats generally don’t like being in those things. But when I got there, I put the carriers down on the ground, opened the doors and then cats walked right in, turned around and sat down. It was like they were saying, “OK, we are ready to go home with you!” The foster mom said it made her feel a lot better that they did that, as she too thought it would be a fight to put them in the carriers and that would be so sad! I thanked her for taking good care of the kitties for the past 5 months – and thanked her for opening her home to foster kitties  in general – they said their good-byes and then I headed home. The cats didn’t like the car ride – there was much mewling – but once we got home they seemed to settle in quite quickly.

First, they checked out every inch of the apartment to make sure it was to their liking. It seemed to meet their approval, so then they set about deciding what their favourite spots are. A big hit early on was looking out the window:

Another favourite is any closet door that gets opened. They run right over to check out what’s inside. Even if they just checked it out 2 seconds before. They especially like this mirrored, sliding door because they can bang on it and get it slightly opened so that they can fit their paw in there and squish their way in. Then they can walk amongst my million and one pairs of shoes that I have in there.

After all their exploring, they decided that lounging on the couch and purple chair is pretty awesome.

This is Watson:

He likes to be pet and *loves* cat nip. One of my hockey teammates gave me a couple of cat nips balls that she knitted and when I brought them home, he lost his little kitty mind of them.

This is Crick:

She is very much a people cat and loves to follow me around the apartment to see what I’m doing. Because I might do something terribly exciting. She also *loves* the scratching post and being up in high places: my dresser, the headboard of my bed, for example. She’s also a fan of cat nip, as well as a toy that I got them that has a little yellow bird on the end of the string and the bird lights up when you bounce it on the string or when the cat bats it. She likes going to town on that bird.

I actually took more photos of them4 on my regular camera, but I can’t for the life of me find where I put it, so those photos are going to have to wait for another day. For now, I’m off to wind down the day with some kitty cuddles.

Update: I forgot to mention this before I hit “Publish”, but Watson & Crick have a Twitter account. Because Copernicus has one and I don’t want to be accused of playing favourites!

1. Steven has a penchant for naming his pets after scientists – his cat is named Marie Curie, though he refers to her as Chub Chub [↩]
2. I was quite surprised when I started telling people their names, that many people haven’t heard of Watson & Crick. They are super famous in biology and I thought they were famous in general. I mean, maybe not Einstein or Newton level of famous, but I thought maybe Schrödinger or Heisenberg level. Apparently not however, as my non-biology friends (even people who are well versed in, say, physics) are not getting the reference. Usually they think Watson has something to do with Sherlock Holmes but can’t figure out where Crick comes from. [↩]
3. For the very interesting tale of how they did that, may I recommend James Watson’s book, The Double Helix? [↩]
4. I know, you are shocked, right? [↩]

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