The cats have many reasons to call us dingbats, dunderheads, and hairy turnips.

For instance: We have the technology to install a fountain of mozzarella in the lobby, but we don’t.

We deplete our beef nugget budget to buy “lint rollers,” which we then deploy to remove fur that (a) was placed with great intention and (b) is as different from “lint” as a Great White shark is from a Goldfish cracker.

And let’s not even get into our insistence on wearing pants.

But for all their concerns about our mental health, cats actually enjoy the silly names we give them. Names like “Ned” and “Jed.”

It goes without saying that every cat has a real name, which we will never know.

Your Tigger may call himself Prufrock, and your aunt’s obese Oreo may well be Genghis Lothar Magnus IV. But if you want the hairy turnips to keep opening your cans, you had best prick your ears up when they call you whatever they call you.

If they call you Ned and Jed, you get to prick your ears up twice as often.

Ned has a melted ice-cream stripe down his nose and makes more biscuits than a Meemaw. Jed is all toffee and turmeric, friendly as a flapjack with paws the size of popovers.

Ned would give you the last taco. Ned had tummy troubles suggesting an over-familiarity with tacos. Jed would let you pick what to watch on movie night, although he is hoping for Under The Tuscan Sun. Jed had wounded paws and an ulcer in his eye.

They are not the same cat. They are distinct, divine individuals.

They are having the time of their lives having fun with us.

Call Ned, and Ned and Jed report for nuzzling. Call Jed, and Jed and Ned pole-vault in your direction. Call for help, and no one in the building will be able to tell you, with one hundred percent confidence, who is Ned and who is Jed.

(We have a microchip scanner for moments like this, of course. But who can say that Ned and Jed have not found a way to trade chips, the way they trade Dad jokes? Said Ned to Jed, “What do you call two rad guys on a quest for melted cheese?” Said Jed to Ned, “Ned and Jed?” Said Ned to Jed, “Yes. But also The Fondudes.”)

They do not look the same. They do not act the same. They had different college majors (Ned: Particle Physics; Jed: Weird Al Yankovic Appreciation). They face different challenges (Ned: calming down his GI tract, doctoral study in meat loaves; Jed: chronic ocular issues, running for Mayor of Flavortown).

But walk into Suite D, where our FIV+ freres frolic, and it will happen to you, too.

You will not survey present company and say, “Ah! How good to see Ned, Emperatriz, Poppa Lay, and Jed.”

You will, against your will, say, “Ned and Jed! Ned and Jed! Ned and Jed! Oh, hi, Emperatriz and Poppa Lay and Ned and Jed!”

Ned and Jed will proceed to switch places so rapidly, you will stagger out into the lobby and greet visitors, “Hi! My name is Ned. And Jed.”

We’re the ones who named them “Ned” and “Jed,” so the responsibility is ours.

As for Ned and Jed, “responsible” is perhaps not the first word I would choose.

But then again, there is no more urgent task than filling this scowly old world with joy. Perhaps they are more responsible than the rest of us combined.

Ned and Jed 2028?

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