Mouche

Mouche, 2 months old (maybe)

So... it's been decided. The kitty is named Mouche, which means "fly" (the animal, not the verb) in French. Of course I thought it was weird. Why would you call your pet another animal's name? It's like calling a dog "Elephant." But I didn' resist, because even before the kitty was officially named such, I'd already called her "Mush, Mush." It has no meaning in Indonesian or English, I just thought it was cute. And Mouche is pronounced the same.

Before Vincent got to the name, though, he was observing the kitty whether she had the "thing" that distinguishes a male mammal or a female. He decided that he couldn't find the male's reproduction weapon, so it's gotta be a female. Only a few days after that, he found out that a calico, the term for tricolor cat, has always been a female. Chances are little to none that it would be a male. And even if there is, it's almost certain that a male calico is infertile or inable to reproduce. With Mouche having white, black and creme colours, if we had known this before, we wouldn't have had to spend time guessing what her gender had been. :P

And not surprisingly at all, Indonesians made up a cute story (more like superstition) on the supposedly scientific explanation on why tricolour cats are nearly always female. It is said that male kittens that have three colours will never survive because the father cat always eats them; while he lets the female kittens alive. When I asked why it was so, the answer was: "Maybe the father cat doesn't want competition at the mating season."

I guess the superstition was a quicker way to say that tricolour cats are always female. Imagine if you have to explain it scientifically to an Indonesian that it is genetical, the difference between male carrying xy chromosomes and female xx and how the fur colour is highly affected by those chromosomes. It already seems very long and tiring just to imagine it.