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To bring the booyah

To bring the booyah

120510-daisy-10-craning-neckbooyah \ BOO-yah \, noun ;
1. mighty power
2. eminent magnificence
3. colossal success
          See: Sluggo, Adam, Virginia, Daisy

Cats, in general, bring the booyah.* They bring it so well, in fact, that it’s almost unfair to single out a particular feline as being a bringer of the booyah.

But then you see something like this, and you realize that not all booyah is created equal:

Sakes alive!
Sakes alive!

Sluggo brings a bigger booyah than any rivals (and he does it while decisively proving that no domestic cat is too large for our solarium tubes – not that Sluggo is exactly a “domestic cat,” but that’s another story).

Adam, bringer of the booyah
Adam, bringer of the booyah

But even aside from our largest lug, however, Tabby’s Place is currently rich in cats who know how to bring the booyah. Mass quantities of the booyah.

Adam assuredly brings the booyah. A tidbit of a tabby with an unruly intestine, Adam started life as a bottle baby. Somehow separated from his mama as a tiny kitten, Adam was hand-raised by good folks. That’s a lovely, excellent, stuff-of-children’s-books thing.

However. Bottle babies who are raised as “only children” tend to have certain distinct traits into adulthood.

Brashness. 
Brassiness.
Inability to imagine a world where everything is not about them.

Call it Veruca Salt syndrome: Adam wants the party, he wants the golden egg, he wants the wet food, he wants your attention. NOW.

NOW. NOW. NOT FIVE MINUTES FROM NOW. NOW.

You could imagine that, in the hands of a lesser beast, this might be a tiresome trait.

Adam, however, also brings the booyah.

Try as I might, I could not get a photo of our Virginia ham doing anything other than this.
Try as I might, I could not get a photo of our Virginia ham doing anything other than this.

With an angel face, a plaintive meow, and a comrade in fellow screamer/sweetheart Hawkeye, Adam is irresistible (not so much in the chocolate-covered-marshmallow sense as in the “resistance is futile” sense). Adam has so much love for you – yes, you, you who are reading these lines right now, even if he hasn’t met you yet – that you will succumb to his demands. And all he’s really demanding is love. (Demanding it, yes. People call him Maurice, since he sings of the pompatus of love. And by “sings” I mean “screams in an extremely pathetic and heartbreaking meow.”)

Adam’s not alone. Next door in Suite Sumo C, Sluggo has acquired a rival for the title of booyah bringer. If she gains some weight, Virginia will also rival Sluggo for the title of hugest cat – but, at only 18 pounds, she’s still about 6 metric tons away from that.

But size and booyah have no direct correlation. In Virginia’s case, she brings enough tortoiseshell attitude and skritch-my-chin sweetness to supply a lifetime of booyah. (And this would be using the upper estimate of your daily recommended dose of booyah, too.) Part of our recent Georgia group, Virginia is 95% peach and 5% spitfire. (Which, in combination, would be a perfectly-grilled toasty peach. Of which Virginia appears to have eaten many, with extra whipped cream. But I digress.) If she were human, Virginia might be Suzanne Sugarbaker from the 80s hit Designing Women. She suffers no fools. She knows her gorgeousness. She carries her weight with class. She has more style in one of her orange swirls than all the models in Milan.

Then again, being human would be a considerable step down for Virginia.

Georgia must have had a glut of the booyah this year, because they were kind enough to send us a second booyah-bearer: Daisy.

Got a girl named Daisy.
Got a girl named Daisy.

 

Along with Violet, Pansy, Petunia and Gerber, Daisy is part of our current army of torbies. Not quite tabby, not quite tortie, these swirly-brown-and-orange girls are the watercolors of the feline world. But though their hues may be dainty, these are booyah-bringing broads like no others.

I select Daisy from this garden simply because she brings the boldest booyah of all. The rest of the torbie army is her flesh-and-blood kin (as the story goes, Gerber is mom to the whole lot), and Daisy generally gets on with them just fine. Unless.

Unless she is expected to share a dorm room (that is, quarantine crate). Excuse me? Share a small space, with another cat (or rat, or three-toed sloth)? Moi, le Daisy? Y’all must be kidding, or using controlled substances, or just plain dopey as a dab of dippity do.

When we attempted to put Daisy in a (large) crate with lookalike sister Violet during their quarantine period, we learned that Adam’s not the only one worthy of the nickname Veruca. Suddenly Daisy went all spitty and slappy towards her sister. (Full disclosure: Violet gave it back to her 100%. Booyah-bringing runs in families, you know.)

Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do. I'm half-crazy, all for the love of you.
Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do. I'm half-crazy, all for the love of you.

Now that she’s got her own space in a suite, Daisy’s back on the sweet side, which is its own kind of bringing-of-the-booyah. Essentially, Daisy fails to bring the booyah about as often as Christopher Walken fails to bring the scary.

The booyah. Tabby’s Place is rich in it, thanks to a senate’s worth of stellar felines. Be it known, potential adopters: taking one of our cats will bring a world of booyah into your home.

*While there may be an occasion under which it is appropriate to say simply “booyah” rather than “the booyah,” I cannot imagine what it might be. And I don’t want to offend the bringers of the booyah, so I’m not going to take any chances.

Photo credits: Daisy, Flangela; Sluggo, anonymous Tabby’s Place staffer whose name may or may not rhyme with Twane; Adam, volunteer Jessica; Virginia & Daisy, Flangela.

4 thoughts on “To bring the booyah

  1. ADAM’S problem is he lives in the same room as HAWKEYE who also wants your love, now, now, now. Trying to give both of them love at the same time isn’t very easy.

  2. As Adams former foster mom, this fits him to a tee. Even though he was raised around our 5 cats and dog he was always very demanding. Guess it’s that bottle fed thing. Even at 3 weeks he was already walking and running around the house. He wanted what he wanted right then and now. He is a great cat that I am glad to see is getting lots of attention.

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