How not to name your pets

Several years back in Chicago, I rode the bus to work every day. My bus stop had a sewer cap right in front of it, and every day I read the words on the cap because there was nothing else to look at. I’m quoting that sewer now, “Neenah Foundry, Wis.” I loved the word “Neenah.” I hadn’t ever been to Wisconsin yet, but that was a good name. A name I later found out actually came from the town of Neenah, for which the local foundry was named. Still a good name.

A few years later, a woman unknown to me was walking down Foster Avenue (a busy street, like Frankfort Avenue during rush hour back home). The woman was approached by a ferret. Really, a pet ferret danced up to her on the sidewalk. She looked at it and knew this was no wild animal and that it was someone’s tame pet, so she scooped it up and walked it into the nearby police station.

An officer at the police station said, “My daughter has a pet ferret, I’ll take it home.” The officer called her daughter at work and told her, “Someone turned in a loose ferret to the police station. I’m taking it home, and we can try to find a place for it.”

The daughter happened to be my employee. She hung up the phone and turned to me, “Do you want a ferret?”

I was anguished at the dilemma. Of course I wanted a ferret! But we already had such a zoo in our small apartment. There was Pikachu the chinchilla, Shiva the sugar glider, and Loki the cat, and they took a lot of our time for care and affection, but we loved our little menagerie like a family. We always joked we wanted to get tax status for a charitable organization because we were running a no-kill animal shelter.

I called Matthew. “Honey, I know it’s your turn to pick a pet and you wanted a ferret when I got Pikachu. My employee’s mom just had a loose ferret turned in at the police station, and they need to find it a home. I don’t think we can handle it though. We’ve got a zoo already.”

He said, “That’s OK honey. If you don’t think we can handle adding a ferret, then we won’t do it.”

“All right. I feel better. I just feel so bad that it needs a home and that you wanted one.”

“I know. It’ll be OK.”

After two days of not finding a home for the ferret, my employee asked me to ask my friends if anyone wanted a ferret. Another phone call was in order.

“Matthew. I really don’t think we have room for the ferret.”

“I know sweetie.”

“I want the ferret.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I really want the ferret.”

“Well OK then.”

The next day we bought a ferret cage with exercise tubes and researched the best ferret food and talked to our vet about ferret care, and that night we went to go get the ferret from the police officer’s house.

“What are you going to name it,” they asked.

And the pronouncement came: “Little Spike if it’s a boy for my favorite wrestler, and Neenah if it’s a girl.”

They laughed, “Our ferret’s name is Spike!” But he was huge, and this ferret was little, so it seemed “Little Spike” might be the right name.

The next day at the vet, the next pronouncement came: “It’s a girl!”

“Well then her name is Neenah.”

The perfect name for our little escaped ferret. From the streets she was rescued, and from the streets she was named.

Neenah was the perfect little frisky companion. She’d bear-hug our ankles and look into our eyes and make silly ferret faces, she’d play-attack our feet as if we didn’t tower over her, she’d steal my socks and my shoes and my unopened mail and make nests to burrow into under the couch. She was a busy little girl.

But Neenah passed away when we moved back to Kentucky. She lived to a ripe old undeterminable age, then she got tumors in her belly. Her surgery was successful, but she was never the same. She tired easily and didn’t like to play any more; she just burrowed and made nests all over the living room. We laid her to rest in my parent’s back yard with our family’s childhood pets, knowing we gave her the best life a foundling ferret could ever have.

Reminders of Neenah are sadly all around us. We find pictures of her at odd times when we’re cleaning our apartment. And every day there’s thousands of “Neenah Foundry” sewer caps looking up at me. I can hardly look at the ground without seeing “Neenah” somewhere to make me miss her. And amazingly, for a year Matthew worked at a place on Neenah Avenue. Every day he turned his car left down Neenah, a street we never thought of before since it was so far from our neighborhood. I cried when he took me to see his office. He couldn’t speak about.

It would be nice to say some platitude about “Neenah lives on in spirit” or something, but really we miss her terribly. My only advice is, don’t name pets after sewer caps.