I adopted my sweet black kitty in October 1998. She had been at the shelter for over 5 months and had developed more than a little roll around her middle from lying around there all day. She purred so loudly when my friend LJL put her in my arms that I knew it was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Her name, according to the records, was P.J. Her previous family had written in the shelter questionnaire that she was 5 years old. They had taken her in when neighbors had moved away a few years before and were unable to take her along. This second family brought her to the shelter because, they stated, allergies made it impossible to keep her. After I got her home and looked more closely at the veterinary records the original family had kept, I saw one page dated January 1990. She was nearly 9 years old, at the very least.

I didn’t love the name P.J., ‘cause I figured it was short for something ending in "Junior" which generally means the animal was named for a previous pet. I decided I should stick with the name, though, since she surely was accustomed to it. But she never responded to the name. The second night in my apartment, I called to her from my bed to see if she would join me for a snuggle as she had, unprompted, the night before. I called out "P.J.!" and waited. Nothing. Again I called. Waited. Nothing. Several minutes later, I tried out the name that I felt fit her better. "Zelda!" I called. The reaction was instantaneous. She scampered into the bedroom and leapt onto the bed. Zelda she would be.

I had imagined a different name for a black cat. Something like Oprah or Aretha, perhaps. But this cat seemed like she needed an even more special name. Zelda was the name of a favorite great-aunt, one of my paternal grandmother’s sisters. There was no video game by that name at the time, and it wasn’t likely to be a name I would choose for a child some day. The name was a perfect fit, and so was the kitty.