Let Me Introduce Myself....

My new humans have a habit of naming cats after cartoon (or tv) characters OR great aviators.

Years before any of us lived here the male human started taking care of a feral cat who he named Baracca, after a famous, Italian WW1 fighter pilot who happened to be from the town just next to ours. You could say he was the Red Barron of Italy. Well, last year a grouchy reddish cat showed up at our house, in desperate need of a good meal. He is a skittish thing who still won't let ANYONE get close enough to touch him. Once it became clear that the vagabond was going to continue showing up at our house for three squares a day, the humans decided that they had to name him. Since they already had one feral cat named after a WW1 fighter pilot (and the fact that he was red) the Red Barron became the obvious choice. So that is how he came to be known as Manfred Von Richtofen, but he is lovingly called Manny for short.

Years before either of these cats even existed, Opus was named after the fat little penguin from the County Bloom comic strip. Of course he will tell you that he was named Opus because that is the Latin word for "great work". Shhhhh, don't tell him I told you the truth!

So when it came to naming me, the humans had two choices: name me after a comic strip like Opus or name me after a great pilot like the feral cats were. The first thing that came to the female human's mind was Amelia after Amelia Earhart, a pioneer in aviation. The male countered with the name Olive after Olive Oyl from the Popeye comic strip.

Everything thought the name Olive suited me as my eyes are olive colored AND I was about to move to a country that is famous for its top notch olive oil. PLUS there was a woman named Olive Beech who made some big contributions to aviation (she was one of the founders of the Beech Aircraft Company. It seemed like the perfect name!

HOWEVER, once I got home the male human started having second thoughts. I was nervous my first week with my new brother and took to growling and hissing any time he got too close. (Hey give me break, it was a long journey to get here and I was under a lot of stress). The male human started saying that I was a little witch which made him think of a character from the Scrooge McDuck comic strip. She was a witch from Naples who wanted to steal Scrooge McDuck's first magic dime. Her wish was to throw it into Mt. Vesuvius to release its magic so that she could use it. In the Italian version of the comic strip the witch, who was called Magica De Spell in the English version, was called none other than Amelia!

At the end of the day, no one could pick which name to use because they liked both names equally and that is why they have decided to use BOTH names.

I am officially known as Olive Amelia Patches (Patches was my original name)! But my friends can call me Ollie! It is a big name to live up to, but I will do my best!

Thank you to everyone who voted for my name! I look forward to getting to know each and every one of you!

PS. Don't tell Opus that I hijacked the blog. I thought it needed a little bit of girl's touch!