An Introduction To My Cat: Oh, you called your cat Lucifer?

I thought I would try my hands at a different kind of post today. I usually post more serious content, but today I thought I would introduce you to my cat called Lucifer. He is a seven-year-old mitted seal point Ragdoll.

My wife and I actually got him for our four year anniversary (before we were married), we had moved in together about a year prior to taking the leap and getting the cat of our dreams.

When I say cat of our dreams, I mean we literally spent months on Youtube watching videos of Ragdoll cats and hyping ourselves up to buy one. We actually drove four hours to some breeder up in North Queensland to buy him, suffering car troubles along the way.

Wait, you called your cat Lucifer?

Funnily enough, we never really read into the name much at the time when we named him. The name Lucifer means more to some than others, we are not religious by any means so it's just a name, but Lucifer is another word used to describe the devil (a bad guy in the Bible).

Over the years we have had to explain over and over again why we called our cat Lucifer, usually something along the lines of, "We just really liked how unique the name is, but we're not Satanists" I work with a few people who attend church every Sunday and the name of my cat recently came up and one of the people I work with seemed genuinely shocked we called our cat Lucifer (awkward).

By far the funniest part of all of this is when we bought our house a year and a half ago in a quiet street in a moderately nice suburb. It's the kind of street where all of the neighbours seem to know each other, everything happening in the area and street, and love to gossip about things from housing developments through to the guy down the road who allegedly went mentally insane after contracting Hepatitis B.

Down the end of our street is a church, it's a moderately sized church because it's attached to a Christian school. Quite a few people in the street attend this church, our neighbours are mostly Christians who can be seen walking down the street every Sunday morning with their nice collared shirts and bibles in hand.

About six months after we moved in, our cat got out. Ragdolls are unlike your usual breed of cat, they have almost no defensive instincts so they are prone to being attacked by other animals. We were walking around outside in the yard yelling, "Lucifer, Lucifer, where are you?"

In retrospect, living in a street with church-attending Christians hearing their new neighbours walking around yelling "Lucifer" without the context might be a bit of a shock for them, but it still makes me laugh.

We didn't really think about it at the time, because we just wanted to find our cat. Eventually, we found him in the garden rolling around in the bark like a dog.

Then two days later the neighbour was walking her dog past our house and stopped in for a chat. Her first question after asking how we were was, "Did you call your cat Lucifer?" and my wife and I responded, "Yeah, we thought it was an awesome name" and she replied, "Oh, that's interesting. Did you know Lucifer is another word for the devil?" and we acknowledged that we did and the conversation ended soon thereafter.

It was at this point we knew some of the neighbours had concluded we were members of a Satanic cult and we had choen this street for its high concentration of Christians and that we were planning to corrupt them over time.

Lucifer is an anti-stereotype

You have probably heard that Ragdoll cats go floppy when you hold them and that they crave love, affection and really like sitting in your lap. Not this cat, for some reason we got a Ragdoll that doesn't want to conform to the stereotype.

He is afraid of new people (he'll go hide under a bed) and we promise that we don't beat him or give him any kind of reason to be afraid of people. He doesn't like too much affection (being scratched or patted too much) and will only sit in your lap for maybe five minutes.

He has issues with doors being closed. If we close any kind of door in our house, he will go crazy clawing at it and try to get into the room, like he thinks we're locking him out of some kind of party or something.

While on the subject of issues, he also has issues with being alone (despite hating too much affection). If he thinks we've gone out and left him, he'll do this deep meow like a howling dog because he thinks we've abandoned him or something. You only have to go outside and mow the lawn or hang the washing to hear him start.

Even with all of this anti-Ragdoll traits, we love him, even if he doesn't show his love back for us most of the time (sometimes he can be affectionate). This cat has embedded his way into our lives and it'll be a sad day when he passes away. Although indoor cats live longer and Ragdolls can live upwards of twenty years of age.

What I am trying to say is, this is my cat and his name is Lucifer. Also, we are not Satanists (promise). And the good news is our neighbours don't think we're Satanists anymore either, either the neighbours are just being nice because they're scared or they realise it's just a name we chose and nothing more.

Now if you'll excuse me, I am late for my monthly occult meeting (just kidding).